


Nathaniel Kurtzberg is tired of this shit

by writing_toole



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Is Sunshine, Gen, M/M, Time Travel, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26974153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_toole/pseuds/writing_toole
Summary: The post-Papillon future isn't going so great. What's the obvious thing to do? Kick Nathaniel back in time to fix it, of course. The problem there is that means our older, cynical, wounded protagonist who has Seen Some Things is now re-living his teenage life and trying to keep his frankly ridiculous friends from looming disaster.
Relationships: Marc Anciel/Nathaniel Kurtzberg
Comments: 82
Kudos: 55





	1. Nathaniel is so, so tired

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Le Chat Noir](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631922) by [ParadiseAvenger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseAvenger/pseuds/ParadiseAvenger). 



> I was writing my first MLB fic, an Adrien-focused post-Papillon piece, but it was getting really really dark (as they do, since Adrien's arc is diving head-first into tragedy) and the characters were getting grumpy about it then decided to do something about it, as happens. This is the result.
> 
> The potential for salt, snark, and cynicism definitely exists. Related works will pop up as they become relevant. (Though in some cases they're related for theme or character reasons. They're all good, though)

_It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, there were no clouds in the bright blue sky, and as Nathaniel Kurtzberg looked out over the Parc du Champ de Mars and the crowds of people gathered for the seventh Heroes Day to commemorate the defeat of Le Papillon and the loss of Ladybug and Chat Noir he watched a Cataclysm sweep over the Eiffel Tower._

_“Well, that was a clusterfuck,” said the person standing next to him. He turned and saw a tall red-headed woman in a light blue and white spandex bunny suit frown as she watched the tower collapse to dust. She had a folded umbrella resting on one shoulder._

_She turned to go and Nathaniel realized who it was. He hadn’t seen her since they’d all graduated from lycée, and she’d grown another 20 centimeters since then, but she was still unmistakeable._

_“...Alix?”_

_“Oh, hey, Red,” she said, as if she just noticed he was there. “How’ve things been?”_

_He gave that a moment’s thought. “Bad? Then really bad. It was getting better, then…” he trailed off and gestured at the Cataclysm’d pile beyond the park full of screaming people._

_“Yeah. Not really ideal,” Alix said as she stared off into the distance._

_Nathaniel felt a growing prickling at the back of his neck and the air started getting an almost greasy feeling to it, like something was about to go terribly wrong._

_“Hey, Nath?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Maybe_ you _can do something,” Alix said, right before she swung her umbrella and hit him right in the face._

* * *

“Aaaah!” Nathaniel jerked up, toppling his chair backwards. His nose hurt from the umbrella, the back of his head hurt from hitting the ground, and the room was spinning. Plus he was actually in a room and not outside. And he couldn’t see out of his left eye. Which hurt.

It was a sad testament to his life so far that this wasn’t in the top 25 bad things he’d dealt with. Not quite as sad a testament as having a top 25 bad things list where remembering drowning slowly also hadn’t made it on the list, but it was Paris and you kind of got used to that.

“Dude, you ok?”

He focused on the voice coming from somewhere above him. Squinting he looked into a tanned, pink-mopped head.

“Alix? Why did you hit me with your umbrella? Why did you even _have_ an umbrella? You don’t have an umbrella. Umbrella is a weird word.”

As he talked his brain cleared a little. On the upside, the room came into sharper focus. On the downside so did the pain in his head. It was kind of a mixed bag, to be honest.

“Wait,” he said, as he stared upward and a sudden realization hit him. “Alix, why are you so _tiny?_ ”

“Hey!”

“You weren’t just tiny, you were big. Bigger. Mostly. Not counting the ears.”

Nathaniel realized he was babbling at the same time he realized that all the background conversation in the room had stopped. That meant there must be people staring at him. He hated it when people stared at him, and his embarrassed blush was almost as red as his hair.

Fine, deep breath, he could handle this. He was sitting in his chair, on its back, on the floor, in a room. A tall room, with a second floor balcony running around it. Also books. Lots of books.

He tried to sit up, but that didn’t work since he was already sitting. Lying down too, sure, but also still sitting and sitting _more_ turned out to be counterproductive.

Trying to _not_ sit seemed a better plan, and indeed it at least got him closer to vertical. Unfortunately time travel is bad for the abs and he couldn’t hold it for more than a second before he sat again even harder than before.

It wasn’t a total waste of effort, since he got a momentary look at more of the room.

“There’s a table down there,” he said.

“No?” said Alix, who was still looming and still disconcertingly short. “Down is the floor.”

“Down is the table,” he said, waving towards his feet which were indeed pointing at the table he’d seen in his brief flirtation with non-horizontality. “The floor is back.” He punctuated it with a slap on the wood behind him.

“Um, fine?” Alix agreed in a transparent attempt to humor him. “I think you hit your head Nath.”

“You hit my head,” Nathaniel said. “With an umbrella. We already established that.”

Trying to not sit again, he reached up for the table. It was a much more successful, at least relative to the last attempt, though not _actually_ successful given he still missed the table. Nathaniel looked at his outstretched hand, which was at least ten centimeters away from the edge. Waving it a few times in the table’s direction didn’t make it get any closer.

He did see Kim watching him over the table. He of course, waved back at Nathaniel. Not that it helped any, but at least it was friendly. Friendly, and young, and alive. So there was that.

Nathaniel looked at his hand. It was… smaller. He’d always had slender hands, but these were downright tiny. It was also missing the scars on his left knuckles.

“Well, fuck,” he said with casual annoyance. “I’m small too. When did that happen?”

“Duuude! Language!”

“…Nino?”

Nathaniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then another as it actually helped clear his head.

He was small, Alix was small, Kim was small and not dead, and Nino was at least present, and probably also small. That was unusual.

“Am I having one of those weird dreams where I’m back in Lycée?” he asked.

“Collège,” Alix corrected, sounding altogether too cheerful.

“Great,” he said with a sigh. “At least in this one I’m wearing pants.”

“Not a dream, though,” Alix said.

Finally collecting himself enough to actually do something useful, Nathaniel rolled to his left and off the chair. Sitting worked better this way, and since it was most of the way to standing he figured me might as well keep going until he was on his feet.

He was at the end of a rectangular table. Alix was next to him, even more disconcertingly short when he was standing. He recognized the faces, but names took him a moment. On the right side was Kim and Max, on the left was Alya, Marinette, and Nino. On the far end was—

“Sunshine?”

“Hah!” crowed Alya. “See?” Nino frowned and handed her some money.

“You were gambling over my head wound?”

“Dude, she bet that someone in our class would use that nickname,” Nino said.

“Why am I sunshine?” Adrien asked. He had a puzzled look on his face.

“Mystery of nature,” Nathaniel said absently. “But why am I here?”

Everyone stared at him. “Do you need to go to the nurse?” Marinette asked.

“He didn’t hit his head that hard,” Alix said.

“No, but you did. You have a hell of a swing,” he grumbled.

“We’re here to study for the chemistry test later this week,” Max said, and it was the first helpful thing he’d heard.

“You came with us and were not studying,” added Markov. “Then you jumped, tipped your chair over, and accused Alix of hitting you with an umbrella which she doesn’t have.”

“Oh.” That all made sense. It wasn’t helpful, but whatever, he’d managed worse. “It must’ve been a…”

He stopped. Been what? He was in collège again. Everything was scarily normal, everyone including him was young and nobody seemed to think they’d been shrunk. And Alix either had no idea what he was talking about or was really good at hiding umbrellas, so that just left one obvious option.

“…time akuma?” he said.

“Time akuma? Is that even a thing?” asked Kim.

“It is,” Marinette said absently as she stared at Nathaniel. It was a very focused stare and it made him kind of uncomfortable. A little turned on, too. He’d unpack that one later. Or not. Not seemed like the better choice.

“I, uh… can tell you—”

“No! You don’t have to,” Marinette stopped him. “I don’t think we should know about the future? That’s never safe.”

The table all stared at her. “In the movies? They… change the future? With the knowing?”

“If we’re lucky,” Nathaniel said, before he caught himself.

“Dude!” said Nino. “Is the future bad?”

Nathaniel sighed. “Don’t ask, you don’t want to know.”

“The probability of time travel is only 8%,” Max said. “While the probability of an Akuma-induced delusion is 74%.”

Nathaniel silently did the math. “What’s the other 16%?”

“You’re hallucinating and none of this is happening.”

“Also you cannot add,” added Markov.

He closed his eyes for a minute. These were his childhood friends, from before Paris was ruined. They were also superheroes, he realized as he looked around. He was a time traveller sitting at a table full of maybe teenage superheroes. _All_ of them were maybe superheroes except him.

“I hate magic so, so much,” he muttered, just glad his few spandex adventures had been involuntary.

“I still think he’s just whacked,” said Kim.

Nathaniel wasn’t sure Kim was wrong, but felt obliged to defend himself anyway. If nothing else there was apparently a chemistry test coming up he was at least a half decade late in studying for it, and if anyone here believed him it’d be easier to cover for that. The problem was that while he knew a lot of things about his classmates, he wasn’t sure what _they_ knew because he wasn’t sure how far in the past he was.

Awesome. At least Adrien’s presence meant there was at least _one_ thing he could count on.

“Fine. Do you trust Sunshine?” he asked, pointing at Adrien.

There was a round of nods.

He started walking towards the back of the library, grabbing Adrien’s collar as he went past, dragging him over to a corner. He could see everyone, and it looked like they had privacy, but just to be careful he leaned in close to Adrien’s ear and put a hand up to shield his lips from view.

“Papillon has the butterfly miraculous.” He’d been starting with the easy ones, and that wasn’t much of a secret, so he wasn’t surprised to get no real reaction.

“Mayuura has the peacock miraculous.” Adrien stiffened a little, but Nathaniel was pretty sure he wasn’t yet convinced, so he pulled out the big one.

“You,” he said quietly, pulling Adrien in even closer, “have Plagg. Chaton Noir.”

Adrien’s pulled back, his eyes wide. “You… how?”

“You told me,” Nathaniel said. He didn’t say it was during what was one the worst nights of their lives. They could get into that another time. Or maybe not, it had been pretty horrible. He’d traveled back in time, maybe he could avoid having to relive that ever again.

Adrien rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation.

“You were my friend? That I trusted?”

Adrien sounded both hopeful and hesitant, like this was something he desperately wanted but didn’t believe he should have. Nathaniel’s weary, abused, cynical heart broke, and right then he promised himself that his future would _never_ happen if he could possibly stop it.

“Yeah, Sunshine,” he said, pulling Adrien into a hug, “You _are_ my friend, and I trust you.” He ruffled Adrien’s hair a little. Not much, it was nearly a solid object with the amount of product in it, but he did the best he could.

He felt Adrien start to purr, and gently disentangled himself. In the future, at least, it always took Adrien a few seconds to notice the purring and it embarrassed him.

“So?” Alix asked as they walked back. “Legit?”

Adrien sighed. “I believe him,” he said.

“What did you tell him?” demanded Marinette. She was a lot more forceful about it than he thought was really necessary, but he had tried to very awkwardly sexually assault her not too long ago so it was probably fair. Sure, she’d kicked his butt for trying, but that was fair too.

“It’s private, Marinette,” Nathaniel said.

She didn’t look happy about that, and he suspected she was going to corner him later and demand answers.

Adrien put his hand on Marinette’s shoulder. “It’s fine, Marinette. He didn’t say anything dangerous,” Adrien said.

“I don’t aaah! Adrien!” Marinette’s intense stare turned into one of wide-eyed horror as she sprung away from Adrien’s touch. In the process she fell backwards over a chair and kicked a stack of books that were inexplicably placed on the edge of the table. One of them flew across the table, hit a cart full of returns, which then bounced off a bookshelf, caught Adrien in the back, and knocked him on top of Marinette who by this point was lying flat on the floor. The two of them were now blushing a red brighter than his hair.

The room was dead silent for a moment, before a magic marker rolled off the table and hit Marinette, leaving a red dot dead-center in the middle of her forehead.

Then the bookshelf which the cart had collided with tipped forward. It was caught by two empty chairs that were coincidentally nearby so it didn’t hurt anyone, but all the books in it did end up piled on top of the awkward not-couple.

Nathaniel stared in utter horror at the total disaster the combination of Marinette and Adrien had created. “Were they always like this,” he asked Alix in disbelief.

“Are, Nath. They _are_ like this.”

“I haven’t gone back in time,” he moaned. “I’ve gone to hell.”

Alix snickered. “Yeah, you get used to it.”

He gave her a disbelieving stare.

“Fine,” she admitted. “But you do get to point and laugh a lot. That’s worth something.”


	2. Hi Lady... seriously?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladybug pays Nathaniel a visit, as one would expect. It doesn't go quite the way she planned.

It was late afternoon and Nathaniel was sitting on a bench in a park by the banks of the Seine, sketching the fire-scorched shell of Notre Dame Cathedral. The scene was the kind of magic you only found in Paris — the slanted sunlight was golden and perfect, the stained glass sparkled in rainbow colors, and the sky behind the building was a deep blue. Aside from the amazing view, the location had two nice properties. First, it was open and isolated, so when Marinette finally tracked him down they could talk privately.

Second, it wasn’t his apartment.

Earlier that day Nathaniel had traveled back in time, from seven years in the future to now. While you might think suddenly having your twenty-one year old brain in your fourteen year old body would make collège easy you’d be very wrong. For one thing he had no idea what was going on in his classes. For the other, well… his home life hadn’t been that great the first time around when he’d been fourteen and powerless. Now that he was fourteen and powerless _again_ but remembered what it was like to actually have some control over his life?

He really wasn’t looking forward to dealing that.

So instead he was head down and trying to figure out if the scaffolding around the cathedral towers contrasted better with a flying saucer or Gigantitan. Because avoiding your problems is a strategy.

Not a good strategy, mind, but totally legit. Really.

Wrapped up in his drawing he didn’t notice anyone approaching until a shadow fell across his sketchpad and messed up the lighting.

“Nathaniel, we need to talk,” said Marinette,

“I wondered when you’d be by,” Nathaniel said. “I—“ He stopped himself abruptly when he looked up and saw who was talking to him.

“Oh, sorry Ladybug, I thought you were…”

Nathaniel trailed off as he took a good look at the superhero standing in front of him. Marinette was annoyed at him. Marinette knew something really weird had happened this afternoon at school. Marinette was going to have a serious talk with him.

Ladybug was standing in front of him, annoyed and looking for a serious talk.

Realization hit him then, in much the same way that cream pies hit clowns.

“Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding. Seriously? _Seriously?_ ”

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me,” he said, jabbing a finger at the puzzled superhero. “You know exactly what I’m whatting. Bloody _fucking_ hell magic is ridiculous.”

“I—“

“No. Don’t. Just don’t.“ He reached over, opened up his messenger bag, and screamed a wordless scream into its void. The void didn’t scream back this time, which was probably for the best.

That apparently wasn’t the reaction she had been expecting.

“I, uh, came to say we…” she trailed off, uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

“Yes? We?” Nathaniel was having an enthusiastically fucked up day and didn’t feel inclined to make things easy for her.

“…need to talk?”

Nathaniel snorted. “That is a thing you can say, yes.”

“This afternoon, you said time travel akuma and then you and Adrien, and then the hug and he _smiled_ and—“

He’d been prepared for a conversation about Papillon, or timelines, or future issues. He wasn’t prepared to deal with Marinette faffing around about her love life. “Stop! Just… y’know what? I can’t deal with this right now,” Nathaniel snapped.

“But—“

“Not. Right. Now. If Ladybug wants to talk to me we can do it after dark someplace with a good view and a ladder down because I am going to sketch the hell out of my frustrations when we’re done. Right _now_ I am going to take a deep breath and then I am going to go get a croissant and some privacy and then I am going to go swear a whole lot more than I should.”

“If—“

“Croissant. And. Private. Swearing.”

“Do… you know a good patisserie?”

He just shot her an unimpressed look. “What do you think?”

* * *

It took Nathaniel about fifteen minutes to make it over to _Tom & Sabine’s Patisserie and Boulangerie_. He didn’t see Ladybug along the way but assumed she didn’t take the Metro and would beat him there.

Seriously, who used a yo-yo to travel? And why didn’t she and Chat Noir leave a trail of broken shingles, chimneys, and street lights all around the city?

“Magic is ridiculous,” he muttered, not for the first time.

He stood in front of the shop for a minute, trying to get himself together. Despite what he’d said he really _hadn’t_ expected that Marinette was Ladybug, and he was still trying to wrap his head around that and what it meant. What he’d worked out so far seemed too farcical to be true, which made him suspect things were actually worse.

There was a limit to how long he could put off his chat with Marinette, so he pushed open the door to the shop. The interior wasn’t that big but it smelled of pastry and chocolate and butter. It was wonderful and he kind of hated walking in because he knew he was going to have to leave after.

“Hi, Mme Cheng,” he said to the short asian woman working behind the counter. There was a small stack of fancy bakery boxes next to her that she was filling with macarons.

“Nathaniel! We haven’t seen you in a while,” she said, looking truly happy to see him.

Nathaniel cringed. “Since… yeah. I’m sorry. About the thing. With me and Marinette and the akuma and the kidnapping and everything.”

“It’s not your fault, Nathaniel. These things happen.”

“Is Marinette here? There was a project that came up at school this afternoon that we were going to work on.”

“I think she stepped out but —”

Sabine was cut off by the crash of a flower-pot hitting the sidewalk outside the shop.

“—she must’ve gotten back when we were busy. Why don’t you go upstairs?”

“Thanks. Can I get a couple of _pain au chocolat_?” She waved away his money which was a relief. He didn’t have all that much and he suspected he was going to have to do some shopping soon.

The inside of the apartment hadn’t changed any since the last time he’d been there as himself, and he took the spiraling stairs up to the top floor, then though the kitchen and up the final staircase to Marinette’s room. The trap door at the top was closed, and he gave it a couple of knocks before opening it and peeking his head through.

“…hi?” he said as he looked around.

The room was as pink as it had ever been, the walls covered with pictures of Marinette and her friends. There were even a few pictures with him in them and he marveled at how young and innocent he looked in them. It was like someone completely different, and in a way it kind of was.

He sort of wished he was still that innocent.

“I wasn’t sure if you were going to come, Nathaniel,” said Marinette.

He shrugged. That was fair, he supposed.

“It’s nice to have someone to maybe talk to? And we need to talk. I have my croissants,” he said, closing the trap door back down. “This place is private?”

Marinette nodded, a wary look on her face.

“Good,” Nathaniel said.“It has been a confusing, shit covered train wreck of a day.” And with that start he launched into a rant of epic proportions, liberally punctuated with profanity, arm flailing, and bites of croissant. It took him nearly fifteen minutes before he ran out of pastry and hit “…and fuck a goddamn cabbage!”

Taking a deep breath he tried to be Zen and let the irritation go. He failed, but trying’s worth something.

He looked up and saw Marinette staring at him, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and frozen in place. Floating next to her, equally comically bug-eyed, was a red blob of a creature. Her kwami, he supposed.

“Sorry,” he said, as he flopped down onto the chaise. “It’s been a hell of a decade today.”

“We… you… But…”

It was kind of funny to see how flustered she was. He shouldn’t be laughing at it and he wasn’t, barely, but the Marinette he remembered was either cartoonishly clumsy, amazingly kind, or totally in charge. She didn’t really do flustered, except maybe around Adrien.

“Deep breaths, Marinette. It helps. And, um… Kiki?” he asked. The little red blob had recovered from her shock much faster than Marinette had, which made sense if what Adrien had told him was true. She was as old as the universe, so presumably some enthusiastic cursing wasn’t going to faze her for too long.

“Tikki,” the tiny red god corrected.

“Tikki,” Nathaniel said. “Sorry. We never met in the future. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He held out his hand. Tikki took his index finger in her paws for an awkward handshake.

“Did I break her?” he asked.

“Only a little,” Tikki said.

“Good. Croissant? I got a second for later, but I think I need it now.”

He broke off a piece with a good bit of chocolate drizzle on top and handed it over. The two of them just waited, munching on their pastry, for Marinette’s brain to reboot. Nathaniel pulled his sketchbook out of his bag while he waited, sketching between bites of truly excellent croissant.

“That was a lot,” Marinette finally said. “You weren’t like that yesterday?”

He shrugged. “Yesterday was a long time ago. What did you want to talk about?”

“In the library, you said you talked to Bunnyx and she sent you back in time?” She asked.

“Bunnyx?” Nathaniel gave her a blank look.

“Alix in the future in a bunny costume,” Marinette explained.

“Oh, yeah, with the umbrella. The future wasn’t so great. I mean, it was definitely getting better for me, but that wasn’t saying much. It felt like something really bad was going to happen”

“Did she say anything? About what had gone wrong?”

“No? Just that it was a clusterfuck...” Marinette winced at the obscenity, and Nathaniel sighed. “…while we were watching the Eiffel Tower disintegrate.”

“How did the moon look?”

“Round?” He answered in confusion.

“Good,” Marinette muttered.

“Why would there be a problem with the moon?”

“I can’t talk about that,” she said. “It’s not a good idea to know about the future.”

“You’ve done this before, I assume?” Nathaniel was not sold on the not-knowing-about-the-future thing, mostly because he _did_ know about the future and wasn’t going to un-know things no matter how much he’d like to.

“A few times,” she admitted.

“I want to not _have_ my future,” Nathaniel said. “It wasn’t good. I want a better one.”

“But…”

“You don’t either, trust me.” He wanted to tell her more — hell, he _needed_ to tell her, or someone, more, to have someone to talk to about the things that would happen, the things he wanted to not have happen.

One look at her face made it clear that he couldn’t. It burned, how much he needed to talk about it, and he couldn’t, not with her. The realization hit him that she needed to talk as much as he did, maybe more, and she couldn’t, and his heart broke a little more.

“Fine,” he said with a sigh, giving up on her. “We can’t talk about what may happen. Can I tell you about what I _want_ to happen?”

Marinette nodded cautiously.

“What I _want_ is Adrien to have a nice apartment and kids he loves and a wife he adores and the a happy relaxed life. That’s what I want.”

“What about you?”

“Me?” Nathaniel asked, surprised. “What about me?”

“What you want isn’t for you, it’s for Adrien. Do you…”

He knew what she was asking even if she couldn’t say it.

“Love him? Yeah, though not like you’re thinking. Even now he’s gone through so much, and it’s going to get so very bad. I… want him to come out the other side of it all and still be able to be happy. That’s what I want.”

He ached with that need. Nathaniel had gone through hell, had been so _broken_. Adrien had helped put the pieces back in place, had held him together while he cried and screamed and healed, even while Adrien himself was in so much pain. Now Nathaniel was back, before all the death and destruction, before Adrien knew of the betrayals and lies and he might still be held together with gum and string and hope, but Adrien hadn’t broken yet.

If he had his way Adrien wouldn’t break. He had no idea how he’d manage, but he was going to do it.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

“No worries, Marinette,” he said. “Just… step the fuck up, okay? He could be really happy if you do that. Past that…” he trailed off to think. The conversation had gone about as far as it was going to, and neither of them were really up for more.

“When you finally go after Papillon you _call me first_. Second, if you find out Chat’s identity you tell him yours or vice versa.”

“But we can’t know. It’s not safe! You can’t tell him who I am!”

“I won’t,” Nathaniel said. If Marinette found out Chat was Adrien her head would probably explode, and Adrien realized Ladybug was Marinette he’d get so over-the-top sappy that he’d melt into a puddle, and then she’d drop-kick him into the Seine.

“I think that only one of you knowing is a lot worse than both of you knowing, though. I can see so many ways that could go really wrong, if only one of you knows.”

It was clear that she didn’t like that. He didn’t know why, honestly. Adrien had talked about her need for to protect their identites, something he’d always respected but didn’t really understand. Nathaniel didn’t understand either, but he wasn’t up for working that out at the moment.

Regardless, all the talking was really tiring and he was ready to be done. She wasn’t, though. Luckily he’d been preparing for that.

“Nathaniel, we need to—“

“Want to know a secret?” he asked.

“What? No!”

“Really? An Adrien secret?” This was an entirely unfair question and he was completely good with that.

“Yes! I mean no! I mean maybe?” She looked torn and a little comical.

“It’s a present secret, and I think he wouldn’t mind.” He waved her in a little closer.

“You know how Sunshine’s got that golden glow? Do you know how far it goes?”

Marinette gulped and shook her head, suddenly unable to form words.

Nathaniel tore out the page he’d been working on while they’d been talking. It was a partial sketch of a very fit, very nude young man. It was in three quarters profile, from the edge of his ribs down to just above his knees, every elegant, perfectly formed muscle clearly defined. While the picture ws mostly shades of grey he’d done with his pencil, Nathaniel had added some bronze highlights making it very clear that there were no tan lines, though not _everything_ was visible — a bottle of ‘Adrien: The Fragrance’ tastefully obscuring a few key bits.

Not completely, though. Perfume bottles are mostly clear after all, as was the fact that the figure was a natural blonde.

As he got up to leave, he handed the drawing to Marinette.

“It goes all. The. Way,” he said, descending the stairs to the high-pitched sound of squealing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sadly I don't quite gloss over the dark roots of the story the way the show does. Still, it's fun to have Marinette catastrophize even if I don't write it that well


	3. Cards against Kwami

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel's starting to learn to roll with the ridiculous. It's working surprisingly well. Also that chemistry studying's not going to ignore itself.

It was lunchtime, and Nathaniel was alone in the back of the classroom trying to study for tomorrow’s chemistry exam. ‘Studying chemistry’, of course, meant digging through his LadyBlog DMs and picking out commission requests. As one does. To study for chemistry.

There were definitely going to be a few people who were in for a quality-bump surprise when they got their finished pieces. Nathaniel made a note on the inside cover of his sketchpad to update his price list once these pieces were done and he could put them in his gallery.

It also looked like he needed to update his list of what he was willing to draw. He was good with the Furry art, and he’d heard they paid well. It was probably time to draw the line on non-superhero real people, though that one request for a NSFW Adrien+Chat bondage picture was a whole lot funnier than it would’ve been a week ago.

Fine, he could draw the line tomorrow.

Unfortunately he ran out of messages long before he ran out of time, so he pulled out his lunch and his chemistry worksheet and started going through the problems. It helped some if he drew out the atoms, adding little spots for the electron. It helped less when he drew little hats on the atoms. Maybe if atoms were polka-dots? Like on ladybugs.

Oddly enough that actually helped.

While Nathaniel was puzzling out the intricacies of balancing insect-based chemical equations he heard a rustling noise from the front of the classroom. He looked up just in time to see Adrien’s bag, which he’d left when he went to the caf for lunch, tip over.

There weren’t all that many things that would cause bags to suddenly fall. Tiny magical beings seemed to be the most ridiculous option, so Nathaniel assumed that was probably it.

“I have some cheese,” he called out. The rustling stopped suddenly, which only convinced him he was right.

“There’s some Buche de Chèvre, and I’ve got ham and brie on a baguette if you want that instead. It’s warm, been in my bag all morning.”

The room was silent, but silent in a way that rooms were when there’s someone paying very close attention to what you were doing.

Nathaniel took a long, theatrical sniff of his sandwich. “Uh, oh, I left this on the counter all week. It’s stiiiinky…”

That was apparently too much to resist as a small black blob shot out of Adrien’s bag and hovered right in front of Nathaniel’s face.

“You going to share that?” asked the tiny god as it stared at the sandwich and drooled. It looked a lot like Tikki had, only solid black with whiskers and cute little cat ears.

“Nah, I’m going to give it to you,” he said, handing over the wedges of cheese. “You must be Plagg,” Nathaniel said. “Adrien’s mentioned you a lot.”

“You’re Red. He’s never mentioned you.”

Nathaniel shrugged. “Time travel,” he said, as if that explained everything, which it kind of did.

Plagg nodded. “Sucks.”

While Plagg was eating, Nathaniel pulled his bag out and started looking through it. “Cards?” he asked.He really wanted a chance to talk to Plagg and figure out what he knew. He had plenty of time to study in the evening. “Is Tikki around? I have a Skat deck and some cookies if she is, or we can play Belote.”

“You know sugarcube?”

“We met yesterday,” Nathaniel said. “I checked in with… you know who Ladybug is, right?”

“Pigtails,” Plagg said. “We know our holders.”

“Anyway, we met but things went a little sideways and I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Tikki. Or Marinette. It was a little weird. I guess you usually stick with your… holders?”

“Usually,” Plagg agreed. “It’s boring. My kitten will be fine.Do you know how to play Piquet?”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“I’ll teach you, Red. 32 cards, seven to ace, twelve to each of us. Easy.”

While Nathaniel shuffled out the low cards, Plagg finished off his cheese and started in on the baguette. “You and my kitten,” he asked suddenly. “How did that happen?”

“In the future he lets me share the apartment he has in Marseilles. We were roommates for about a year. We came back to Paris for the Hero’s Memorial, the Eiffel Tower got Cataclysm’d, and then Alix in a bunny suit hit me in the face with an umbrella and punted me backwards in time.”

“Happens,” Plagg said. “You get used to it after a while.”

“I guess? It was new to me. Adrien said you were old? Something about the dinosaurs.”

“Bunch of jerks,” said Plagg. “They had it coming.”

Nathaniel froze as the realization hit him. “That was millions of years ago.”

“Destruction,” Plagg said with a cute little shrug. “Tikki’s older than I am, but only by a little bit. Few picoseconds.”

Nathaniel took a nervous breath and asked a question he figured he’d regret knowing the real answer to. “So what’s a 14 billion year old god doing in Paris?”

“Playing cards, Red. You have hands, it’s your deal.”

Nathaniel filed that away with the other things he was going to think about as later as possible.

“So I’m sort of lost here,” he admitted as he dealt the cards out. “I know things that are true, but Marinette’s convinced that if I tell anyone it’ll be a disaster.”

“Welcome to our world,” Plagg said, discarding a card.

“I also know how things go if nothing changes. I like Sunshine, and I will _not_ let them get that bad.”

“Worse than the tower?”

“Worse like of Paris destroyed, most of the city has PTSD, the Ladybug and Black Cat miraculi were broken, and Adrien’s running around the roofs of Marseille wearing a black domino mask and novelty cat ears because he thinks Ladybug is dead and it’s the only way he doesn’t shatter into a thousand pieces.”

Plagg stared at him with ridiculously big green eyes.

“What about you, Red?”

He shrugged. “Not great, but I didn’t wake up with screaming nightmares _every_ night. How’s Sunshine right now?”

“Not much better. He had his own time travel thing to deal with.”

“Sass, right. That gets worse for him,” he said with a sigh.

“He gets out of the house when it gets too bad.” Plagg looked at Nathan. “He gets out a lot.”

“Fuck, that house,” Nathaniel said. He remembered what Adrien had said about it, how cold and soul-crushing it was. From his stories and Nathaniel’s memories of school it was clear that besides being a terrorist supervillain his father was abusive and his assistant was… also a terrorist supervillain. Nathaniel was pretty sure the abuse stretched back years before the terrorism, probably from Adrien’s mother, too.

“Living there isn’t good for him, and he’s never going to figure that out if he stays. I don’t suppose you can convince Adrien to leave? Document everything, petition for émancipé, and get out of that hellhole?”

“I’ve tried, Red. He’s not having it. He still loves his father.”

“The man’s not worth it,” Nathaniel said savagely. “He never was. Even if he left, I don’t think Sunshine’s ready for the real world. Guess I need to help fix that.”

“I keep offering to Cataclysm his dad, but he won’t bite.”

Nathaniel stopped. “That would solve a surprising number of problems.”

“Real satisfying, too,” Plagg added.

“Maybe we should leave that as a last resort. I don’t think he’d take it well if someone he trusted killed his dad.”

“Would you, Red?”

“In a heartbeat, Plagg. I’d even bring a dustpan to clean up.”

“I like you, Red,” Plagg declared. “Huitième. I win.”

The tiny god laid his cards down in a suspicious pile of soot. Nathaniel decided that he’d skip calling Plagg on it and gathered the remaining cards up instead.

“Wait,” Nathaniel said as a sudden realization hit him. “Adrien is totally in love with Ladybug, so he flirts like a weeb as Chat. Ladybug shuts Chat down because Ladybug is really Marinette, and Marinette is completely infatuated with Adrien, who she can’t manage complete sentences around.“

“This is why I prefer the love of a good cheese,” Plagg agreed.

“No, Plagg, they’re… they’re completely cock-blocking each other.”

“And it’s hilarious,” Plagg said with a tiny, amused grin.

Nathaniel slumped in his chair, daunted by the seemingly insurmountable task ahead of him. “I don’t know if there’s enough help in the world for them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hold that it's canon that Adrien's mom was either as emotionally abusive as his dad, or a victim of domestic abuse. Hard to say which, but definitely one of the two.


	4. Inconvenient akumatization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chemistry exams wait for no man, nor anyone's story outlines. Also Collège Françoise Dupont really needs better screens on its windows. Just sayin'.

Nathaniel was sitting at his bench in the chemistry lab, staring at the blank tablet in front of him. It shouldn’t be blank. It should be showing him his exam questions, but it wasn’t. The screen was white. White and mocking.

“No, no, no, not now,” he muttered as he held down the reset button, frantically shaking the tablet as he did.

That didn’t help, the shaking, but it made him feel better.

Inresponse it gave a shrill beep, showed the sad Android boot loader screen, and started to get warm. That was _not_ any better — ‘my tablet caught on fire’ was not a valid reason to skip an exam. Marinette had tried that two weeks ago and it hadn’t gone well.

Mme Mendeleiev scowled at him and he felt his panic rising. He was already only barely passing this class, he’d only had two hours of sleep last night because he needed to finish one last comic panel which it hadn’t come out right anyway because he still wasn’t used to his fingers being smaller. Being fourteen again _sucked_ , and not in a good way.

In retrospect maybe he shouldn’t have spent the first third of the exam on a figure study. In his defense he was sitting behind Kim, who had thought he had swim practice that afternoon rather than a chemistry test. He’d already changed into his swim shorts, and scrambled to put on a too-small t-shirt instead of his hoodie when he realized he needed to be dressed for class.

Seriously, what was Nathaniel _supposed_ to do in those circumstances? The boy had killer lats, and his ass was a thing of beauty.

Sweat prickled along the back of his neck as he futilely pushed the buttons on his dead tablet, reminded, again, why in the future he’d taken the Bac L and not the S. The breeze coming through the classroom window didn’t help, it just made him feel clammy and gross. And panicked. Definitely panicked.

“Mme Mendeleiev, I think…” he started to say, trailing off in horror as he glanced down and saw what was an entirely unsurprising visitor about to land on his tablet. He felt a familiar cold flutter, then heard the voice in his head that he really, _really_ didn’t need right then.

“Bachelarius, I am Papillion. I—“

Nathaniel snapped.“Not now,” he snarled, trying to shake off the little butterfly. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You—“

“Not! _Now!_ ”

Nathaniel had only barely been holding himself together before getting punted back in time, and the few days he’d been back had been dealt with mostly by force of will and truly impressive amounts of denial, but being akumatized was more than he could handle.

Unfortunately for Papillon, the things he was most angry about were all because of that magical terrorist. His fury was huge and unexpected, directed entirely at the guy on the other end of the butterfly.

He could feel Papillon’s surprise, then the link between them abruptly cut out. He thumped his head against the desk, barely aware of the murmur sweeping through the room.

Nathaniel looked up to see the entire class staring at him. Mme Mendeleiev was slowly edging towards the door, Marinette had fallen off her stool and was crab walking backwards, and Adrien was reaching for his shoulder bag.

“What?” he snapped.

“You’re purple,” Kim blurted out.

He looked at his hand, which didn’t help much telling him what color he was as it was covered in white magic fabric.

“Sonofa—“

“Language!” snapped Mme Mendeleiev. From the look of horror on her face he could tell it was pure reflex on her part.

“Sorry, Mme Mendeleiev,” he said, before looking down to see if his tablet had magically recovered.

Nath could’ve dealt with being akumatized, he really could. Whatever magic made the ridiculous possible also seemed to blunt the resulting PTSD. That made the multiple rounds of possession tolerable, even if Papillon didn’t have an exquisitely terrible sense of timing. But messing with his tablet in the middle of an exam? That was going too far. Yes the thing was now magic, and yes it probably did… something, but whatever it was definitely didn’t include showing him his exam questions, and even if it had using it was probably cheating.

“I am going to kick him straight in the dick, I swear to god,” he muttered as he stormed to the front of the room. He tried very hard to ignore how all his friends shied away from him.

He failed, but at least he tried.

He should’ve been polite, and should’ve been understanding. Right then he was stressed and overtired and underprepared, and also sort of possessed and undoubtedly a raging fashion disaster and just couldn’t.

Reaching the front of the room, Nath slammed his tablet against the edge of the desk, dropped the pieces, and grabbed the purple butterfly that emerged. He held the fluttering insect between his fingers, shuddering as black and purple smoke briefly clouded his vision. Looking down he saw his tablet was still in pieces, but that wasn’t any more broken than it had been at the start of this whole nonsense.

Nath grabbed ever-present volumetric flask off its stand on the lab bench. He shoved the bug down its neck, covering the top with his hand to prevent the akuma’s escape.

“Can you grab a stopper, please?” he asked Mme Mendeleiev. Silently she reached down to slide open a drawer in the desk and blindly scrabbled around in it for the black rubber he’d demanded. She held it out to him, her hand shaking.

He shook the flask a few times, the butterfly fluttering against his palm for a moment before dropping down to land on the bottom. When it looked like it was settled he held the flask up and silently waved it at the teacher and, when he moved his hand from the top, she put the stopper in. The class let out a collective breath.

“Do you have a spare tablet? Something happened to mine,” Nath said, as if this was an everyday occurrence, which it kind of was.

Mme Mendeleiev silently handed him one of the loaners every teacher kept in their desks. He gave her a brief smile and nod, took it, and turned to head back to his seat. He saw Marinette had managed to make it out of the room, and suspected they were going to have a visitor in a minute.

“Give this to Ladybug for me,” he said to Adrien, and set the flask down next to him.

“I, but, what?” Adrien said, but Nathaniel just ignored him in favor of logging into the school server on the new tablet. Adrien would pass it off to Marinette when she showed up and she’d deal with the akuma soon enough.

As he walked back to his seat he heard Alix whisper “Badass.”

He just hoped that got him extra credit on the exam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doesn't seem like a great idea to akumatize someone who's biggest point of emotional upset is "Papillon is a murderous douchebag" but maybe that's just me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There should be sunshine after rain  
> There should be laughter after pain
> 
> But maybe not today.

“Did you do the shopping this week?” Nathaniel called out, staring at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He knew the answer to the question, of course — silence, since his father was so caught up in whatever he was working on, again, to not even notice someone talking to him.

He wouldn’t even notice the apartment flooding, Nathaniel though bitterly. He _hadn’t_ noticed the apartment flooding. Neither had Nathaniel, not until it had been too late, so he shouldn’t be too surprised. He was a lot more like his parents than he was really comfortable admitting.

Resenting that was stupid because the one thing Nathaniel hadn’t wanted after traveling back in time was attention from his parents, except now that he wasn’t getting it he was kind of pissed off.

“I’m an idiot,” he muttered.

There was a bowl on a little table by the apartment door filled with a collection of keys, change, and random bits and pieces. His father usually left his wallet there, a habit he built after years of either running out without it or leaving it in his pants and washing it. Today Nathaniel was in luck, the square of tattered leather buried under a small pile of coins and receipts.

It only had 20 euro in it, but that was enough for the moment. Nathaniel grabbed that, the debit card, and his messenger bag and left.

And if his hands twitched a little from the feel of ghostly butterflies settling on them? That was perfectly normal.

Really.

Leaving the apartment shouldn’t have made him feel better, but it did. Every step down the hallway, every flight of stairs, lifted more weight off his shoulders as he left behind the ghosts of the future dead. In the back of his head he could hear his therapist say ‘avoiding your problems isn’t a good long-term strategy’ and she was right. It was a really expedient short-term one, though.

Figuring out dinner was another good short-term strategy. Getting grumpy because he was hungry wasn’t going to help anyone. He didn’t feel up to anything fancy, but his mother was likely going to be at the gallery until near midnight and his father probably wouldn’t come up for air until nearly the same time. Simple worked.

Nathaniel saw a black figure bounce from roof to roof as he walked towards the Carrefour. He was a little surprised at that. Papillon didn’t usually do two akuma in one day, and he’d already blown it that morning on Nathaniel, which didn’t leave any good reason for Chat to be running around.

There were a few bad ones, though. He yelled “Hey, Sunshine! Square Jean Lavosier in ten!” at the retreating figure and turned towards the park. He could always do the shopping after he sorted things out.

It was always easier to deal with other people’s problems than his own, after all.

The walk over gave him enough time to figure out that he had absolutely no idea what might be wrong, but he was pretty sure there was something.

Just as he got to the park and sat down Chat Noir flew overhead, did a barrel roll that turned into into a perfectly ridiculous three point landing with his left arm outstretched, and said “Hello, random citizen who I do not know! How are you on this fine afternoon?”

“Hi Chat,” Nathaniel replied. “Bad day?”

“How could any day be bad when you can watch the sun setting across the Parisian skyline?” Chat stood and gestured broadly at the horizon, the buildings around them casting long shadows in the fading afternoon light.

Nathaniel smiled a little at that. It was beautiful, and his fingers itched to try sketching it out.

“Any day I’m not purple is a good day,” he allowed.

“I heard!” Chat exclaimed. His staff had extended to a bit more than a meter and he leaned on it, bent nearly in half at the waist. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before. How did you do it?”

“Honestly?” Nathaniel shrugged. “I have no idea. Probably magic. Or time travel.”

Chat gave an exaggerated frown. “Perhaps you can talk to Ladybug about that. Well, I must be off,” he said, and turned to go.

Nathaniel grabbed his tail belt and tugged. It wasn’t nearly enough to actually stop Chat if he wanted to leave, but it was more than enough to provide an excuse to stay.

“Chat, go change. We’re going to attract attention soon.”

“But—“

“Change,” he repeated, letting go of Chat’s tail.

Chat Noir absolutely didn’t slink off behind a tree, and he definitely didn’t drop his transformation somewhere that anyone could see if they were paying attention, and the green flash was totally not in any way noticeable.

“Hi?” Adrien said as he, by complete random happenstance, stepped out from behind the tree that one of the Heroes of Paris had just ducked behind.

Nathaniel decided to let it go. Magic was ridiculous but sometimes that worked in your favor.

Adrien was wearing his normal street clothes, a medal of some kind stuffed in the pocket of his overshirt. He was nervously rubbing the back of his neck, and without his superhero persona to hide behind it was clear he was faking happiness as hard as he could.

“Hi Adrien. Something bothering you?”

This got him a bashful frown. His left hand briefly touched the medal in his shirt pocket. “It’s not important,” Adrien said, clearly lying.

“It _is_ important,” Nathaniel insisted. “You don’t have to tell me, but it is important.”

Adrien froze, like he had no idea what the words Nathaniel had just said actually meant.

“I…” Adrien said after a few seconds. After a few seconds more he asked “Why?”

“Why what?” Nathaniel asked.

“Why do you care? About me?” Adrien’s voice was so, so small as he said that. His whole body seemed to shrink in on itself, like something vital had left his body along with the words he’d said.

“Everyone should care about you, Adrien. I’m your friend, and I care.”

The puzzled look made it clear that Adrien didn’t understand. Nathaniel sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and silently cursed Gabriel Agreste.

“Sit here,” Nathaniel said, tapping the bench next to him. “Sit and let me tell you a story of the future and why I care.”

Adrien sat, almost but not quite touching. Nathaniel sighed, wrapped an arm around Adrien’s shoulder, and pulled him in close. It was better for him that way too, with Adrien right there he could almost pretend it was just the two of them, which made saying hard things a little less hard.

“In the future it’s just me and my parents. The rest of my relatives think Parisians are dangerous and I’m a freak and we don’t talk to them.”

“You’re not a freak!“ Adrien exclaimed, sitting upright as he did.

“I know, Sunshine,” Nathaniel said. He also knew that Adrien was thinking about the wrong thing but that didn’t matter right then. He pulled Adrien back in and started gently petting the back his head.

“I know because of you, but that’s not the point of the story. In the future there’s a disaster and a lot of people die, including my parents. But in Paris we can’t be sad and can’t be angry and can’t _mourn_ because if we do the butterflies get us.

“There was no funeral because it’s not safe to have funerals, and no rabbi to talk to because half of them are dead and I’m seventeen and what the hell do I know about who to talk to, and no friends to help because I’m bad at friends and they had their own tragedies. So it was just me and the guy who pushed the button on the furnace, and after that it was just me and my parent’s ashes.

“I didn’t handle that well. Nobody did and we all pretended we were fine and we so weren’t, but we tried and we almost believed the lies we told ourselves about it. I went to live with relatives who now thought I was waiting to explode as well as deformed and that was exactly as much fun as you think it was. As soon as I could I ran for University and I wasn’t ready and it got worse and I don’t want to talk about that. Then you saved me and I will treasure you forever because of that, but that’s not the point here.”

Adrien had completely relaxed into him as he talked, and Nathaniel gave him a small kiss on the top of his head before continuing. At some point Nathaniel had started to tear up, but he ignored it and pressed on.

“You told me the butterflies were gone and made me believe it. And one day we were talking and I realized my parents were dead and I didn’t have to hide from that and I just cried. I broke down and cried and I couldn’t stop because I didn’t know _how_ and you… you sat shiva with me for them. You sat with me and said prayers you didn’t understand in a language you don’t speak and let me say goodbye and it meant so much I don’t think you’ll ever know.” By now tears were streaming down Nathaniel’s face and he just didn’t give a damn.

“That was the man you were, who you _are_ — even when you were hurt yourself, even when you didn’t understand, you _cared_ , deeper than anyone I have ever met.”

Nathaniel could barely choke out the last few words. He pulled Adrien into a tight hug because they both needed one right then.

They sat there for a few minutes, until the lengthening shadows finally touched them. “He didn’t come,” Adrien finally whispered into Nathaniel’s shoulder. “He promised he would, and I tried so hard. I tried, and I won, but it wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough for him to love me and he didn’t come…” Nathaniel could feel him shudder, feel his shirt dampen as Adrien held on with a near painful grip and sobbed quietly into his shoulder.

“I love you, Adrien. Not because you saved me, not because you helped me grieve, and not evenbecause I think you are sunshine and hope and joy. I love you because you are you, and you deserve to be loved. So you can always, _always_ cry with me if you need to, and if anyone says otherwise I will fight them. Promise.”

He pulled Adrien into a tight hug and held him until the sun set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep trying to write fluffy crack, but apparently I just don’t have the knack.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Someone_ needs to feed that boy, dammit.

Normal days were _weird_. That was the conclusion that Nathaniel had come to as class broke for lunch.

It had been a week since his time jump. Half a dozen of his friends, all of whom were superheroes, (and he still boggled at that) knew he’d time-jumped and… nobody noticed. _Nobody noticed!_ Not after the first day and that frankly unhelpful encounter with Ladybug. Who was Marinette Dupain-Cheng, his ex-crush, and the girl he’d known since he was four.

Well, Marc had probably noticed, but he wasn’t sure. Marc was another thing he was actively avoiding, though he wasn’t sure how much longer he could.

“Hey!” Alix said as she stood in front of him. While he’d been spacing out after class ended she’d come over to his seat and was poking him in the forehead. “Why haven’t you called me?”

“I, um… forgot my phone passcode?”

“Seriously? Lame excuse, Nath,” Alix said. The expression on her face made it clear she didn’t believe him.

“It’s been seven years, Alix. I honestly have no idea what it is. I only still carry the thing,” he said, waving the mostly-useless glass slab at her, “because I can get texts on the lock screen.” He really wished he could get into the phone. There were some old photos he really wanted to see. He also kinda wanted to get the him-and-Marc couple picture changed, since it hurt to look at.

“You should talk to Max. He could get Markov to crack it for you.”

Nathaniel stopped dead. “Yeah, I should talk to Markov. About a few different things.” Like Adrien’s bank records, which Nathaniel was pretty sure Adrien neither had nor had reasonable access to. Adrien had complained in the future about how intertwined his money was with the company, and that was going to be a huge headache if Papillon was unmasked. Adrien was from old money so he wouldn’t be destitute, but the time to untangle him from his terrorist supervillain father was definitely _not_ right after said father had been unmasked.

Nathaniel’s phone, still in his hand, beeped with a reminder. He looked at it but, unlike his texts, the reminder notification didn’t actually say what it was for. It had been doing that a lot. It was probably a lunch one, though, given it was lunchtime.

“We… used to have a schedule? I think?” Nathaniel asked Alix, in case the reminder was for her.

“Yeah, Nath, we had a schedule. Tuesday and Thursday afternoon in the galleries, and Saturday at the Parc. You’ve missed three so far.”

“Oh. Sorry? It’s been strange. Um… can we start again?”

“Italian painting gallery, half past three,” she said as she dragged him out of his seat and off to the cafeteria. It was busier than normal, as the grey morning had turned into a rainy noontime and nobody wanted to leave for any of the nearby cafes.

The day’s lunch entree was rabbit or tuna. The decision was easy, since fish was gross and bunnies were annoying time-travelers and deserved to be eaten.

No, not _that_ way. Get your brain out of the gutter. Besides, Alix was standing behind him and if he’d even hint at that she’d punt him into the courtyard.

The decision _was_ easy… until he looked up and unexpectedly saw Adrien ahead of him in the line. On his tray was a green salad with exactly five pine nuts on it, a bottle of water, and a small cup of yogurt. _Plain_ yogurt.

The look of longing on his face as he stared at the actual food was heartbreaking.

The grumble of his stomach and sharp underfed line of his jaw as he shook his head and turned away were enraging.

“I am so going to kick him in the dick. Twice,” Nathaniel muttered.

“Who?” Nino asked from behind him.

Nath jumped and almost dumped his tray. “Adrien’s dad,” he said after catching his breath.

“Get in line, dude,” said Nino. “There’s a list.”

“Not a long enough one,” he muttered. His friends nodded in agreement.

It wasn’t fair what Adrien was put through. And it _really_ wasn’t fair what was looming in the future that nobody even knew was there. Well, nobody but him and Alix.

“Wait, really? There’s a list of people who need dick-kicking?”

“It’s not a big list,” Nino said, sounding defensive. “It’s only got three names on it.”

“So Gabe and… Papillon?” Nino nodded.

Nathaniel tried to think of a third person worth putting on that kind of list but was drawing a blank. The mayor maybe?

“Chat Noir’s dad,” Nino said as Nathaniel’s confused silence drew out. “He’s on the list too.”

Nathaniel started. “You know Chat’s father?”

“Not exactly,” Nino said. “But, y’know, he’s been around a lot and you hear things and, well…” he shrugged.

That made a certain amount of sense, even though Chat hadn’t really been around them enough as civilians for Nino to know. Carapace probably did, and Nathaniel knew that keeping secret identity stuff secret was hard.

"Plenty of kicking to go around,” Alix chimed in.

“I need to get spiked shoes,” Nathaniel said, to Alix's snicker.

Unfortunately, while kicking Gabriel in the dick would be extremely satisfying it wouldn’t actually solve any problems — he’d still be a terrorist, Adrien would still be racing towards a breakdown, and Paris would still be regularly trashed. The absolute worst part was he didn’t know what to do about it. They were all fourteen and every single scenario he could think of either failed horribly or left Adrien a mess. He was seriously contemplating just borrowing Adrien’s ring, teaming up with Plagg, and Cataclysm-ing Gabriel. He knew Plagg was up for it.

Adrien would probably hate him for killing his dad. Or worse, he wouldn’t hate him but he’d be sad and really disappointed. Nathaniel could live with that, it’d be worth it.

Unfortunately while that would take care of the immediate problem, that still left the larger one — Adrien had no support outside a pair of supervillains and a mute bodyguard, and dropping his dad would still be catastrophic for him. Adrien might be sweetness and light, but he was also about as ready for the real world as a newborn kitten.

Fine. Apparently Nathaniel had a kitten to raise.

Raise and feed, since nobody was doing _that_ either. Even without the whole ‘leaping around Paris’ thing Adrien clearly needed to eat more. Trying hard not to think about it, Nathaniel grabbed two of the rarest pieces of tuna he could see. Most of his spare cash currently came from doing Chat Noir-as-furry commissions, so Adrien ought to see at least something from them.

The cashier gave his full tray a vaguely suspicious look when he went to pay. “Hungry,” he said with a shrug as he handed over his money.

Adrien had gone off to one of the tables near the wall to sit. Alya and Marinette were already sitting there, and even from a distance he could see Marinette’s brain start to stutter when Adrien gave her a shy smile.

“Hi,” he mumbled as he set his tray down to Adrien’s right. That was enough to distract Marinette from her derp-spiral, and she looked at him with curiosity. Sitting with other people was unusual for him, completely aside from the whole time travel thing — he’d never sat with them all before. Honestly he’d barely even talked to them this past week. He meant to, but he’d been getting so distracted.

Nath unloaded his tray onto the table, putting both pieces of tuna on a single plate and subtly pushing it over towards Adrien. He figured it wouldn’t take much to get him to actually take it.

He was, unfortunately, wrong. Adrien looked at the fish like he wanted to pounce, and Nath was about to explicitly offer it when they both heard “I need to see my Adrien! We have a photo shoot this afternoon. The new line is _so_ flattering, it was designed just for me, you know,” float across the room. Coming towards them, slowed only by the adoring crowd around her, was Lila.

Nath was pretty sure he heard a tiny snarl come from Adrien as he looked up and leaned away from the fish.

“You have photoshoots? With _Lila_?” Nathaniel hissed at him.

Lila was the only person, aside from his father and Mayura, that Adrien had ever spoken poorly about in the year they’d lived together. He hadn’t said much, but it had always been clear he loathed her, and he’d taken a surprising amount of satisfaction when her arrest had been announced. Nathaniel himself mostly wished she’d stop talking to him during class.

“You’re not keeping up with fashion?” Alya asked. “Lila’s Gabriel’s new teen muse!”

“Really,” Nathaniel said, his voice totally flat. “Muse? Glad that’s not in any way skeevy.”

“It’s great!” Alya continued, enthusiastically missing the point. “Two people in our class are fashion icons!”

“Really great,” Adrien mumbled. Nobody else at the table paid enough attention to notice how great Adrien thought it wasn’t.

Nathaniel sighed. Raising kittens apparently required some amount of sacrifice, and since Gabriel was sacrificing Adrien it was time for Nathaniel to step up. He dug into his bag, pulling out a pencil, pad of post-it notes, and sketchbook. He scribbled on the post-it for a moment and slapped it down on the table.

“Don’t wait for me, Sunshine,” he whispered. It should’ve been too quiet for anyone to hear, but that didn’t matter. He knew Adrien would hear it anyway.

“Lila!” he called across the caf, waving his pencil like a weapon, “I need a model for a new character in the comic and I was _just_ thinking of you!” Adrien watched as Nathaniel smiled an excellent professional model smile and deflected Lila towards the far side of the room where a beam of sunlight had broken through the gloom and was shining on a single chair.

“The light there will enhance your beauty,” he heard, almost collapsing with relief.

Adrien looked at the note that Nath had slapped down on the table. On it was a sketch of a quadruped skeleton wearing a domino mask and fake cat ears. Above it was the word **_EAT!!!_** with an arrow pointing at the tuna. Underneath it Nathaniel had written _clean plate kitties get scritches._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pathos keeps creeping into my snark. Sorry 'bout that.


	7. Alix has a chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nathaniel can't avoid all his friends forever. Just most of them, for a while.

Nathaniel could hear the commotion off in the distance when he got off the metro by the Louvre. He was on the wrong side of the complex to see the main courtyard, but from the noises and weird flocks of birds he saw over the roof of the museum it looked like M. Pigeon was at it again.

He’d only been back for two weeks and this was the third time for M. Pigeon. Like most of Paris Nathaniel had long since lost count of how many times total poor M. Ramier had been Akumatized. By this point he was less a menace and more a tourist attraction. He hoped the poor guy was getting some therapy.

The Louvre complex was huge, and while there was a public entrance nearby he didn’t want to deal with the crowds. There were plenty of other smaller service and staff entrances, though. In theory they should be locked, but when he tried one of the old antique doors it opened for him.

Nobody bothered him as he made his way to the Italian galleries. He and Alix were supposed to meet in the 18th century rooms, which had the twin advantages of being boring for the tourists and filled with Rococo paintings of sunlit Venice. She had beaten him there, and was skating around the edge of the room.

“Hey, you’re late!” Alix shouted as she caught sight of him. She’d spun around and waved, deftly avoiding the seats behind her.

“M. Pigeon was at it again,” he said with a shrug. It wasn’t why he was late, but it was a perfectly fine excuse and he’d take it. He’d been taking a lot of excuses lately, and he wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about that.

She scoffed. “Papillon needs a dick kicking,” she said.

“With pointy-toed shoes,” Nathaniel agreed.

“Totally. Sucks getting Akumatized. Maybe we should send Ramier flowers. He needs the chill.”

“Who doesn’t these days?” Nathaniel asked, entirely rhetorically. Paris was altogether _too_ chill, really, given that random citizens were turned into supervillains on a weekly basis.

Well, semi-random. Papillon did really like M. Ramier for some reason. Maybe he had a thing against pigeons.

“You, Nath. You need some chill. You’ve been weird the last few weeks. You weren’t there when I beat Kim doing windsprints. Or the bottle stacking challenge! You’re always there!”

“Sorry, Alix. I mean, my phone—“

“Have you gotten Markov to unlock that for you yet?”

“Not yet,” he admitted.

“Nath… you know you have to,” she scolded. “How am I supposed to get my wins documented in fine art if you don’t have your phone?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll talk to Markov tomorrow. Friday at the latest. Promise.”

“Good,” she said, and that was it for that topic.

Nathaniel sat in silence for a while, sketching bridges and gondolas, occasionally bridges in the shape of gondolas, and in one odd two minute sketch some gondolas made of bridges. It was a little surreal, which was a few hundred years wrong for the gallery they were in, but his whole life felt surreal so it fit.

For her part, Alix was practicing standing jumps over the padded visitor seats. Nathaniel honestly didn’t have any idea how she managed to get away with that, but he wasn’t really sure how he managed to just walk into the museum through a private back door either. He suspected some amount of magic. That was turning into his go-to assumption when weird things happened, and it seemed pretty appropriate the past few weeks. He wondered how far back that assumption was valid, and he suspected it was a lot longer than he wanted to think about.

Alix had always been less comfortable with silence than he was, and she brokefirst.

“So how do you turn out? In the future, I mean,” she asked. Alix wasn’t one to shy away from sensitive topics if she was interested. She was also happy to take ‘leave me alone’ as an answer, which was one of the reasons they’d been friends for so long.

“Taller? Kinda fucked up? That’s about it. Maybe a couple kilos heavier, I dunno. Wasn’t eating well for a while and I ended up doing weird parkour stuff with Adrien in Marseilles.”

He missed the parkour. That was something he’d have to start back up again, though he suspected it was going to be a pain. It wasn’t really fair — he’d already paid in blood for at least basic skills. Maybe this time would be a little easier since he had at least some idea what to do.

“You shall always be willowy and fair,” Alix said, falling onto one of the benches and pretending to swoon. She let one hand dangle limply to the ground, the other she held against her forehead. It was ridiculously overdone and Nathaniel laughed a little at it.

“But other than that,” she continued, bouncing back up on her blades. “The sex stuff? Everything works? You were worried.” It had been something they’d discussed on and off for a couple of years, ever since puberty had started to hit and their joint unusualness went from being theoretical to actual.

Nathaniel sighed, thinking back to the one time he’d actually had good sex. It was an extremely pleasant memory, though it hadn’t lasted as long as he would’ve liked and he’d been sore for a couple of days after. “Yeah, it works. Blows your head off,” he said.

“Eww,” Alix responded. She scrunched her face up in mock disgust. In all the time they’d been friends she’d never been interested sex or romance, and he suspected she never would, which is why he enjoyed teasing her about it when she brought up his nonexistent current or potential future sex life.

“You’d hate every long, toe-curling, earth shattering minute of it,” Nathaniel said solemnly. “It was amazingly horrible. Really. Totally.”

“Nath! Gross!” she laughed.

“Hey, seven years,” he said with a shrug. “I did manage _one_ good lay in that time. Only one, but it was really nice.”

“Adrien?” she asked.

Pretty or not, the thought of sex with Adrien was horrifying. “Bite your tongue. That’d be like fucking my brother. Or your brother.”

They shuddered in unison at that thought. “I never should have said that. I never should have _thought_ that. I’m going to need bleach to get that out of my head,” he said as Alix started laughing. “I should immortalize it in paper and force you to experience it too.” He waved his sketchbook at her in a comically threatening way.

“Ahh! No, not He Who Must Not Be Jumped. Never! You fiend!”

“It’s Papillon’s most lame Akuma, the Flail-inator!”

The two of them fell over, howling with laughter at the idea of Jamil doing anything even remotely romantic. They both had no doubt he wanted to try, but his only real chance would be if someone _else_ found him even vaguely interesting and made everything happen.

That was absolutely possible. They’d still laugh at him if he managed, of course.

“So, was it… Marc?” she teased.

That brought things to a quick halt. “No.” Just one word. One flat, solid, final word. “Not Marc.”

“Something happen?” Alix cocked her head and gave him a puzzled look. That was fair, a couple of weeks ago the two of them were basically joined at the hip. Assuming the two of them would at least try to have sex was reasonable.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Nathaniel said. He hunched over his sketchbook and started drawing half-drowned buildings, hoping that Alix would let things drop.

“You’re not talking _to_ him, either,” she pointed out, definitely not dropping anything. “He actually asked me what was up with you. He’s your boyfriend, Nath. You can’t just ghost him.”

“I’m not, I’m just… I don’t know what to say to him now.” He looked at Alix, silently pleading with her to just leave it aline.

“‘Hi, I love you, I want to suck on your face?’” she offered instead, not particularly helpfully.

“You’re such a romantic,” Nathaniel said dryly. “And I sort of don’t,” he lied. “He’s only fourteen. It feels like it should be creepy.” It really should be. Three weeks ago, on either side of the time jump, it would’ve absolutely been creepy, and he wouldn’t even have been interested. Being back in his teenage body was doing things to his head, he didn’t understand it, and he didn’t like it.

“ _You’re_ fourteen, Nath,” Alix observed. Which was in one sense absolutely true, and in another totally wrong. That wasn’t helping anything.

“Not in here,” he replied, tapping his head.

“Fine, old brain. So? That’s not the reason you’re not even talking to him,” she said.

“We kinda break up,” Nathaniel said. He didn’t really want to talk about it, but Alix did and short of just saying no she’d keep pushing. “He dumps me. Bad.”

“What? When?” The surprise was evident on her face. They were in collège so breaking up wouldn’t be unusual, she didn’t think it would be _bad_.

“In about a year?” On his birthday, actually, because nothing says ‘happy birthday’ like the words ‘don’t touch me, you freak.’

“S’not fair to punish him for something he hasn’t done yet,” Alix said.

“He will though. He’ll hurt me, Alix. He’ll hurt me so bad you have no idea,” Nathaniel said, almost pleading with her. He was older, and stronger, and far more scarred now, and there was no way he could go through that again, not with Marc.

“But next year, Nath. He hasn’t hurt you yet. You really like him.”

“I loved him, Alix. That’s what made it worse,” Nathaniel admitted. Even now he still did. He hadn’t even said it to Marc, though he thought Marc knew. Hoped he knew, at least. Marc was the one good with words. All Nathaniel could do was show him and hope. That hadn’t worked out.

“This some stupid fight over the comic?”

“It’s the _intersex_ thing, Alix. We got naked and he freaked.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised she hadn’t thought about that. She so fundamentally didn’t care about sex and romance it often wasn’t even on her list of expected motivations. That was probably for the best, otherwise she would’ve jumped Kim a long time ago and that would’ve pissed Max and Ondine off no end.

“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s just bits? I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Yeah, but you’re not interested in bits. It’s kinda a big deal if you are,” he pointed out.

“Do _you_ think so?”

That was a legit question. When he was fourteen the first time it sometimes was an enormous deal, though most of the time he didn’t think about it. This time around he was older and had done at least some therapy, and “…no? Sort of? Not really, any more, but, you know…” he said with a shrug.

“Freaks people out,” Alix said.

“Like it’s anyone’s business what’s in my pants,” agreed Nathaniel.

“Bunch of pervs,” Alix agreed. She followed with “you still can’t ghost him,” not letting it go.

Much as he hated to admit it at this point, but she was right. Marc hadn’t done anything yet, and didn’t deserve this.

“Fine,” he ground out. “I’ll talk with him.”

The conversation lapsed into silence again. Alix was trying to master doing 180º jumps while Nathaniel quietly worked on getting the look of afternoon shadows cast on boats on canals looking right. Occasionally a tourist would wander through the gallery and give Alix confused or disapproving looks, which Nathaniel assumed she completely ignored.

There was a lot to be said for just brazening things out — if you were doing something clearly not allowed, like practicing skating tricks in one of the world’s finest museums, people assumed that since nobody else was saying anything then they shouldn’t either. Seemed like a useful observation.

They went on like that for another half hour or so, until the silence was broken by Alix shouting “Hah!”

“Finally got it?” Nathaniel asked, looking up from his current drawing. The gondolas on the Venetian canals had been joined by submarines, jet-skis, two separate waterspouts, and an anatomically unlikely set of octopus tentacles trying to pull down the Rialto Bridge. He was actually really happy with those, the shadows were really good.

“Yes! I am awesome!” Alix was fist-pumping from where she lay sprawled on the ground. Clearly something she had tried worked out, though he had no idea what.

“Like a superhero,” he teased.

“Gotta get my skills ready. Future-me is going to be cool, I have tattoos and everything!”

“Have you ever talked with yourself? With the time travel and all I guess you could?” he asked. He hadn’t given future-Alix much thought, assuming she wasn’t going to show up in the past, but she was a time traveler and absolutely could show up here if she wanted, probably.

“Oh, yeah, a couple of times, and we exchange messages. We have lunch next week. Nothing big. I know how to keep secrets, even from me.”

“Huh. You ever mention me to you?” Nathaniel asked with a sentence that he regretted actually made sense in context.

“Not yet? I didn’t know if you wanted me to tell me about you, though I probably remember you, except maybe not. I can leave myself a note and ask if you want.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Nah,” he finally decided. “Don’t bother. If I need to get in touch with you I’ll give you a call and you can leave yourself a message.”

The absolute worst thing about time travel, Nathaniel decided, was the grammar.

“Cool,” she agreed. Her pocket chimed, and she pulled her phone out to check it. “You done? Kim’s at the Ponte des Artes and thinks he can vault more benches than I can. As if.”

“I’m in,” he said, putting his pencils away. “I want to try a run myself.”

“Seriously? That should be hilarious,” Alix observed.

“Yep. Bring the bandages and the ice packs, I’m gonna Athletic at you.”

“I see no way this can possibly end badly,” she remarked, and Nathaniel honestly had to agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel kinda sorry for the custodial staff that has to get all the skate marks off the gallery floors.
> 
> Also someone really needs to find Nathaniel a copy of Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's _Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations._


	8. ...just a little salty. A tiny bit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dammit, Adrien, would it kill you to run a vacuum?

Nathaniel thought, when he turned into the library, that he’d have some quiet time to work. He probably should’ve eaten lunch instead, and was a little hungry and maybe a little grumpy because of that, but he really did want to finish the last few pages of the comic before talking to Marc.

He had a good fifteen minutes of peace, which was great — just enough time to really get into the pencils for the penultimate page, when Adrien and Nino sat down at his table. They were quickly followed by Alya and Marinette, and then Alix and Kim, turning what was a nice quiet spot into a center of conversation.

He ignored them as much as he could and focused on his art. Unfortunately Alix and Kim were egging each other on, as they always did, making the table shift with whatever they were betting over. Alya was talking about something too, and while Nathaniel was trying to not pay attention that was really hard, as she had a voice that could charitably labeled ‘carrying’.

Despite him trying his best, snippets of conversation still floated into his head, which he was finding annoying. “…ickable ads…” was the latest, and he would’ve ignored it if Alya hadn’t nudged him right after and asked“What do you think? Who’s got the best?”

“What? Lickable abs? Adrien,” Nathaniel said without any hesitation at all.The answer was so obvious it just slipped out without his brain actually getting involved.

“Why would you say that?” Adrien squeaked.

Nathaniel looked up in surprise and said “I’ve seen them?”

“Mine?” Adrien asked. “I don’t have any—“

“Pfft,” Nathaniel said, cutting off Adrien’s ridiculous protest. “You so do. You could bounce a euro off those abs. I have bounced a euro off them,” he corrected himself. “Will bounce? Will have bounced? Whatever. Abs. You’re like some kind of perfect anatomy… thing. Sculpture? Diorama? Model?”

“I—“ Adrien sputtered.

“You thought it was funny,” Nathaniel said, giving Adrien an unimpressed look. “It was even your euro.”

“ _I_ think it’s funny,” Alix snickered.

“It is funny,” agreed Kim. “Swooooon-y,” he added, drawing out the o just because he felt like it.

“You have no idea,” Nathaniel said to Kim. “Whenever we were out he was always all ‘It is so warm and I am perspire, let me mop the sweat from my brow with my shirt _in slow motion_ and accidentally flash passers-by’. We were in Marseille, it wasn’t that hot. He did that on purpose.” Nathaniel shot an entirely unimpressed glare at Adrien.

“Flashing the locals? Go Adrien!” Kim crowed.

“No, I’d never—“ he protested.

“It was like that every time we went out. You’d just grab some crop top thing and half the people on the street would be drooling. Crop tops went out in the _eighties_ , Adrien! They’re tacky!”

“I could rock a crop top,” Kim remarked.

“You can’t rock a crop top. Nobody can rock a crop top,” Nathaniel said. “There is no rocking!”

“Even when you have abs?” asked Kim. He patted his stomach in a way that suggested incorrectly that there could, indeed, be some rocking.

“Yes!” Nathaniel exclaimed. “Even then!”

“But—“ Adrien attempted to explain, or possibly deflect, but Nathaniel wasn’t having anything to do with it.

“But nothing! Dead! With the eighties! Stop wearing crop tops, Adrien!”

“I don’t!”

“Bet ya Marinette would agree,” Alix said to Kim.

“As if! Bet not!” Kim disagreed, though Nathaniel didn’t think Kim actually knew anything about style. He did think Marinette would probably be in favor of anything that showed Adrien’s abs, regardless of how awful it might be.

They looked at Marinette for her expert fashion opinion. Marinette, for her part was attempting to speak. It wasn’t working too well, though she did manage some amount of flailing. Also a squeak.

“And that was when he even bothered wearing a shirt,” Nathaniel continued, ignoring Marinette’s distress. He was clearly on a roll. “‘Oh, no, I forgot to do laundry _again_ so will have to go shirtless!’ He knocked over a whole pack of lycée girls with his abs once, it was like a bunch of squealing dominoes. One of them even fell into a fountain. I missed a studio class because of that and got a letter grade knocked off that project because of those abs,” Nathaniel grumbled, glaring at Adrien.

“They’re not that great,” Adrien protested weakly. Everyone ignored him,. though, since it was a patently ridiculous statement that merited no attention.

“We couldn’t even go grocery shopping properly. Need bread? Swooning girls. Need milk? Swooning girls. We went through so. Much. Milk. What is it with you and milk?” Nathaniel complained.

“And you were always all ‘I can’t drink liquids like a civilized person, and must drink from the bottle and accidentally spill it so it trickles down and completely accidentally outlines the fabulous abs I totally have.’ Which, fair, you do have fabulous abs. But puddles! I shouldn’t have to clean the kitchen floor just because _you_ were thirsty. Yuck!”

“But—“ Adrien was waving his hands, trying to deflect the accusation. He had been brought up better than that, and besides wasn’t actually allowed in the kitchen so he wasn’t entirely sure how milk was dispensed.

“It was gross, Adrien! Use a damn glass!”

“Sounds like there was a _lot_ of thirst in the future,” Alix threw in.

“But I— but they— Nobody would want to lick my abs!” Adrien half-shouted, pulling his t-shirt up and showing the group abs which were, in fact, entirely lickable. Across the table Marinette’s eyes had nearly bulged out of her head as she turned a brilliant red and seemed on the edge of melting.

Nathaniel had stood up by then. “Oh _yeah_? The. Tanaka. Twins!” he shouted, slapping the table between each word. “There was _plenty_ of licking going on, and I was cleaning chocolate sauce out of the cushions for a _week_. Why the hell couldn’t you have thrown a sheet over the damn couch? I had to sit on that thing!”

“Twin babes, seriously! Go Adrien!” Kim broke in. He pumped his fist in appreciation.

“Huh? No, guys,” Nathaniel said. The interruption startled him out of his rant. “Alistair and… Matthew? Mathieu. He made breakfast the next morning _and_ did the dishes when he was done, unlike _some_ people,” he growled, glaring at Adrien. “Crepes with nutella and bananas. That was nice.”

He looked around to see the whole table staring at him. “What?” he said defensively. “I like crepes! They’re good.”

“You said guys,” Alya said very slowly, almost predatorily. “Sunshine boy swings both ways?”

“Disaster bisexual, I knew it!” Alix crowed.

“Massive disaster,” Nathaniel agreed.

“Why are we even talking about my abs? Nathaniel, can we please stop talking about my abs?” Adrien begged.

“I’m not the one who went half naked because he never did laundry! Besides, Alya’s the one who brought up your lickable abs,” Nathaniel said, waving at the altogether too-amused ladyblogger.

“I was asking about _clickable ads,_ Nathaniel. On the Ladyblog?” she said.

“Oh? Oh! _Ads,_ ” Nath said. “Sorry, I misheard. Um… dunno? I don’t do web stuff much.” He shrugged as he said this.

“I hate you all,” Adrien muttered, face flaming red.

Nathaniel smirked at Adrien. “Maybe you could add a ‘Chat Noir Abs’ section to the blog,” he said to Alya.

“ _NOBODY WANTS TO SEE CHAT’S ABS!_ ” Marinette shouted at the top of her lungs. She looked almost panicked.

“Maybe they do,” Adrien said, quietly grumbling. “I bet he has awesome abs.”

“Yeah, absolutely lickable, I’m sure,” Nathaniel agreed.

“Yeah,” agreed Adrien. “Wait, no! Maybe?”

“Would you children _please_ be quiet? This is a library,” shushed the librarian, effectively putting an end to their discussion.

“A Chat abs section would totally be popular,” muttered Adrien.

* * *

Nathaniel was sitting on the roof of the Musee National de la Marine, feet dangling over the edge, as he watched the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Someone had left a fully extended ladder tucked away around a corner, and he’d decided that if he wasn’t supposed to use it then it wouldn’t have been there. They had, so he did.

It was an hour or so past sunset, just getting to full dark, and the tower was outlined in lights. The sky was still a bit too bright for many stars to show,so the city skyline was backed by the weird bright darkness that comes right after twilight. It was pretty and left him contemplating things as he slowly ate the brie and corned beef baguette he’d brought.

He didn’t really even want to draw the scene. Maybe later, but right then he just basked in the feel of Paris on the edge of night.

Nathaniel wasn’t at all surprised when, a little later, a blond-mopped cat boy sat next to him, almost but not quite touching. They sat together in silence for maybe ten minutes, just experiencing. As far as he knew there hadn’t been an akuma attack that day, so that meant Chat was either on patrol or just needed to get out of that crypt he lived in.

“What are you doing up here?” Chat finally asked. He sounded a little cautious, which was fair, Nathaniel had been all shouty at him that afternoon. Also they were a few dozen meters off the ground and probably if he’d asked someone would’ve told him that he shouldn’t be up there.

That was a pretty good argument for not asking, he thought.

“Sitting, mostly. Watching the tower. Having a nicer dinner than at home,” Nathaniel admitted, half-waving the sandwich. “Want some?”

“Please?” Chat asked. Nathaniel took one last bite and handed the rest over to Chat, who inhaled it. Nathaniel sighed. Adrien really, really needed to eat more.

“I have some kanelbullar,” he said, pulling a white wax paper bag out of his satchel. “They’re not fresh, but they’re good.”

When Chat looked at the bag with vague suspicion Nathaniel added “they’re cinnamon. Try one.”

Chat reached for the bag, then hesitated. “You know what they say. If you feed a stray cat he’ll keep coming back,” he joked, only not really.”

“Good. I will feed you until you’re not a stray,” Nathaniel said, tapping Chat’s bell and making it chime. “Then you can bring your plus one to dinner and I’ll feed you both.”

Chat did, and it only took him six bites to finish off three of the buns in the bag.

“I wfft wn,” he said through cheeks stuffed with pastry. He tried to hand the bag with its remaining bun back to Nathaniel. He just smiled and pushed it back, so Chat inhaled it in a single bite.

“Thanks,” he said after swallowing. Nathaniel opened two bottles of Orangina and handed one to Chat, and they sat in companionable silence for a while as they drank their soda.

“This afternoon,” Nathaniel finally said, breaking the silence. “In the library. I was angry about things you haven’t even done yet. Things you probably _won’t_ ever do, at least with me. That was mean and not fair and I was out of line. I’m really sorry.”

Chat was quiet for a moment, just looking out over the moonlit paths of the Trocadero.

“It’s fine?” he finally said. “Nobody’s ever done that before,” he added.

“What, yelled at you for not doing laundry in the future?”

“Apologized for yelling at me,” he said.

“That’s…” Nathaniel trailed off. It was sad, but Adrien knew that and saying so wouldn’t make things better. “They should, when they’re wrong. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Well, my abs _are_ awesome,” Chat joked, and Nathaniel just smiled and bumped his shoulder. A companionable silence settled in for a while longer.

“I… I miss it,” Nathaniel finally admitted. “Us. The future. I shouldn’t, you have a chance to do so much better now, but… That’s part of why I was so angry. I really miss _you_ ,” he said. “The you I knew. You’re still here but you don’t know me and it _hurts_.

“Sorry, Chat. It’s not fair. It’ll just take a little time to work out.”

Chat pulled him into a hard, tight hug. “You said we’re friends. Take whatever time you need.”

“Can I come over sometime? Just to hang out?” Nathaniel asked into Chat’s shoulder.

“I’d like that, but I don’t know if you can,” Chat admitted. “My schedule is really packed and I don’t have much free time at home.”

“I know. If you don’t mind me only doing homework and drawing on the couch while you practicing piano or Chinese or whatever that’s fine. Just… being around. It’s nice. Nino’s your cool friend who does stuff, and I’m glad he is. I’ll never be a cool friend, but I don’t mind. I don’t need to be.”

“Father probably won’t allow it,” Chat grudgingly admitted.

“Eh, let me handle that. I’ll bring my kicks with me, he’ll let it go.”

Chat pulled back and gave him a disbelieving look. His eyes glowed a little from reflected light and it was funny enough to make Nathaniel laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Believe me, future knowledge. I know the worst he can do and I’ll be fine.”

Nathaniel’s pocket buzzed and he reluctantly pulled away. The chill started to settle in as he did. “It’s getting late and I should go,” Nathaniel said.

“What you said, this afternoon in the library,” Chat asked while Nathaniel tidied up the remains of their meal. “All that. Did I… the people falling over and all? And the shirts?”

Nathaniel laughed. “Yeah, you did. And the twins. It was a lot more hilarious than I made it sound, even if you do need to learn how to clean a bathroom.”

“Huh,” Chat mused.

“Seriously, you do have pretty awesome abs, Chat, in or out of the suit,” Nathaniel teased.

“Shut up,” Chat grumbled, his cheeks dusted with a faint blush. “Lickable?” he asked.

“Even without chocolate,” Nathaniel agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hold that it is canon that Adrien has no non-rich-boy practical life skills. Also that it is hilarious for Nathaniel to be yelling at Adrien for things he doesn't even know can be done.
> 
> And yes, Adrien has a type, you know he does.


	9. You can't dodge your boyfriend forever, Nathaniel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, you can but you really shouldn't, that's not cool.

Nathaniel was dreading Arts and Crafts class. He’d managed to dodge Marc for the past few weeks with a series of increasingly ridiculous excuses, the last few of which honestly shouldn’t have worked — Marc _knew_ he was neither lactose intolerant nor had a hamster.

He suspected it was magic. At this point anything ridiculous that happened was probably magic. That was his story, and he was sticking with it.

The downside to knowing something was magic was that it stopped workingwhen you looked too hard at it. As soon as he walked into the A&C classroom he knew he’d finally looked too hard.

“Nathaniel?” Marc said, his voice small and quivering. He was clutching his notebook and looked so much like a puppy about to get kicked that it almost hurt to see.

Nathaniel sighed. He knew this was a conversation that was going to suck. A lot. And not in a good way.

“Marc,” he said, nodding at the other boy.

“Um, we haven’t talked much,” Marc said.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, I wanted to redo a few things,” Nathaniel said, intentionally missing the point. He waved his tablet a little. “I have all the pages done, so we can go over them and see if we need to make any changes?”

“Okay,” Marc said. “I have part of the next issue written.”

“Great,” Nathaniel said, trying hard to sound a lot more chipper than he actually was. “I can start those this afternoon.”

Marc, unfortunately, wasn’t actually asking about the pages, and they both knew it. He was staring at the ground, a clear sign he was about to say something he found hard or uncomfortable, and Nathaniel knew he was going to have to shoot him down.

Since coming back in time Nathaniel had been annoyed, and angry, and surprised, and wistful, and even happy once. This was the first time he felt ashamed at what he was about to do.

“Can we get together tomorrow? My mom said we can—“

“I think we need to take a break, Marc,” Nathaniel said before he could get any further.

“What?” Marc said, his head jerking up. Nathaniel could see the tears starting. “Why?”

“It’s complicated,” Nathaniel said before he could stop himself.

“How is it complicated?”

“Listen, Marc, I’m going through a few things right now,” he continued, the breakup script spilling out of his mouth without any conscious effort on his part. It was a little like watching a slow motion train crash he was powerless to stop.

“What?”

“It’s nothing you’ve done. You’re great, really,” he protested, making things worse.

“It’s not me, it’s you?” Marc said bitterly. “Is that it?”

Nathaniel hesitated, because that was exactly not what it was.

“Fine,” Marc spat. “I thought you were better than that. I thought _we_ were better than that.” His whole body was tense, quivering with the emotions he held back only because the humiliation of breaking down in the middle of the room was more than he could handle. He turned and stormed off to the couch in the corner of the room.

Nathaniel winced, looking around the room. Alix was there, can of spray paint in one hand, with half a letter drying on the wall, and Rose was sitting with her headphones slipped off looking almost as sad as Marc had.

Alix glared at him, and for a moment he thought he was going to get a spritz of green enamel in the face. She was clearly furious and Nathaniel couldn’t really blame her.

“I said talk to him. You didn’t have to say _that_ ,” Alix said.

“What was I supposed to do?” Nathaniel hissed.

“Not that, asshole!” Alix said. “Even I know—“

“Akuma!” shouted Rose. The two of them spun and looked at her as she pointed at the window. A small purple butterfly had squeezed through the sill and was fluttering over towards the corner where Marc was curled up and crying. He and Alix might be shouting but it was clear he was the target, and Nathaniel snapped.

The one constant thing Nathaniel had since travelling back in time was a vast, fiery, seething rage. He kept it tamped down most of the time, but it was always there, lurking under the surface. He remembered every second he’d spent dying, every time he’d been hurt, every time he’d been mind-controlled. He remembered spending _years_ afterward trying not to feel anything, years of muted terror that a single mistake, a single human moment, would mean he’d be Akumatized again.

He remembered it all, and when he let go it _burned_ , a fury brighter than a thousand suns.

“Oh, no, you will not get him you fucker,” Nathaniel growled as he ran towards the bug.

For a moment the butterfly just hovered in one place, as if it were confused. Akuma were drawn to strong emotions, though, and it had no real choice, no more than Nathaniel did.

Looking for the most harmless and breakable thing he could think of, Nathaniel grabbed a cardboard tube from a box of scraps. He smacked it twice against the tabletop, the echoey thunk drew everyone’s attention.

“Alix, go get Marinette,” he said as he tried to smack the bug out of the air. “Quick!”

His aim was excellent but magic bugs don’t squash easily. Billows of black and purple smoke engulfed the paper tube and Nathaniel heard an increasingly familiar voice in his head.

“Vindicatif, I am Papillon—“ the tacky supervillain started to say.

“I know who you are, you purple suited fuck,” Nathaniel snarled.

Papillon had dealt with many different reactions to his attempts to Akumatize people. Some welcomed the power, most of the rest were easily manipulated to do what he wanted, and an occasional few had enough force of will to fight back. There was almost always some amount of fear. He’d never encountered someone who’s main desire was to kick him in the dick via telepathy. This was new and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

“—what?”

“You will leave him alone, am I clear?” Nathaniel continued.

“You dare—“ Papillon started, growing angry that a _child_ had the temerity to talk back to him, let alone actually attempt to dictate some kind of terms.

“Am. I. **_clear_**?” Nathaniel snarled. Every second they were connected reminded Nathaniel of the people he’d hurt, and he pushed his swelling fury down the link at Papillon.

The supervillain’s ego, sadly for him, won out over sense and he tried again.

“I will not—“

“You want to get into this with me?” Nathaniel snapped. “Really?”

“I—“

“I have a flash drive full of business records and the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s tax cheat hotline in my contacts. Try to touch him again and I will _fucking. End. You!_ ”

Nathaniel was nearly blinded by his rage, and he wasn’t sure which threat caused Papillon to run. Black and purple smoke roiled around the tube, turning it back to plain cardboard. It condensed into a small purple butterfly which launched itself into the air, its color fading away to white as it reached the window of the classroom.

Fury was hard to control, and Nathaniel nearly fell over when he lost his target. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to center himself. Fury was exhausting, and his body shook with its passing. When he did finally look up nearly everyone in the room was staring at him like he was some kind of alien.

He didn’t care about them. The only person he cared about hadn’t even noticed the akuma. Making that right was scarier by far than facing down Papillon.

“Marc?” Nathaniel said as he walked over to the couch, his voice hesitant.

Marc looked up, his eyes red and swollen, tears and mascara streaking down his face. He was utterly pitiful and the sight stabbed Nathaniel straight in the heart. There wasn’t anything he could say that would make it better, no words he could think of that would undo the damage he’d done. So instead he grabbed Marc’s face with both hands and pulled him in for a long, very serious kiss.

This was, as far as Marc was concerned, their first real kiss, and it took him a moment to figure out what exactly was happening. When he did, though, he responded with desperation, grabbing on like he was terrified Nathaniel would vanish. Kissing like that can only go on for so long before someone needs to breathe, and when they hit that point Nathaniel pulled back just enough to speak.

“I’m sorry. I love you and I never said, and I’m not breaking up with you. It _is_ complicated, and I promise I’ll tell you anything I can, but I have a few things I need to do, and I need to get Markov to unlock my phone.”

That was enough of a non sequitur that Marc let him loose, staring at him in puzzlement.

“I forgot my phone password. It’s a long story and sort of embarrassing, and all this is mixed together. Before we talk, can you read this? Please?”

Nathaniel fished a pamphlet out of his messenger bag titled ‘So your boyfriend is intersex’ and handed it to Marc. “It’s got some links, too. The internet’s kind of horrible about this, but these are good.”

Marc gave it a blank look, clearly at a loss and more than a little exhausted from his crying bout.

“Okay?” he said. Tentative, again, but in a way Nathaniel recognized as normal for him. He gave a relieved sigh.

“Thank you,” Nathaniel said, and ducked in for another not-quite-quick kiss. “I know it’s a lot, but right now…we good?”

“I… think so?”

Nathaniel slumped in relief. “Good. I’m sorry I’m not better with words most of the time. Read that and hit the internet and we can talk after—”

There was a loud _bang_ as the classroom door slammed open, surprising the pair. They sprang apart, looking around the room in alarm.

“Nathaniel?” Marinette said. She was out of breath, clearly having run from wherever she was. Alix was behind her, flashing Nathaniel a big grin and a thumbs up.

“Hey, hi! Cool. Do you know where Adrien and Max are right now?” he asked, as if nothing at all strange had happened.

“…English class?” she said, not sure at all what that had to do with anything.

“Great, thanks! I need to talk to him. Max is in that class, right?” he asked, taking her arm and half-dragging her out of the room. She was unexpectedly buff, and it was harder than he’d expected.

“Why did Alix come running for me?” Marinette asked as he closed the door behind them.

“Oh, we had a bug problem,” he said breezily. “It’s fine now.”

He tried walking towards the stairs but didn’t get anywhere as Marinette unceremoniously hauled him to a stop.

“What kind of bug problem?” Confused, sort of flighty Marinette was gone, and in her place was concerned unhappy Marinette. He could almost see the red mask on her face as she asked.

“Moths,” he said. “I dealt with it.”

“You dealt with it,” she said, voice flat and unimpressed. “ _How_ did you deal with it?”

“I… don’t know?” he admitted. “I expected to be purple and embarrassing again which is why I had Alix get you, but we didn’t get that far this time.”

“How far did we get?”

“Uh,” he said, trying to remember what it was he had actually said. He’d been furious and words had just kind of spilled out. “I think I… threatened him with tax records?”

“Tax. Records.” She said, the two words dropping into the conversation like boulders. “Taxes are the secret to fighting off Akumatization?”

“Maybe? Also maybe there was some threats of grievous bodily injury, but not serious ones,” he lied.

“Really.”

“…no?” he confessed, squirming a little. “The tax thing wasn’t serious, I don’t have Papillon’s taxes.” _Yet_ , he thought silently. “He just seems like the kind of guy that might, you know, do that kind of thing?”

Like possibly try shuffling a few million euro through accounts allegedly controlled by his kid and dead wife. Not that Nathaniel had paid much attention the time Adrien had ranted about that after a particularly stressful call with Nathalie.

Marinette’s head drooped. “Nathaniel, you need to stop doing this.”

“I made sure to grab something obvious that Ladybug could break, just to be safe,” he protested. “I made sure everyone saw!”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said, entirely unimpressed. “It could be really dangerous if he gets you. I don’t want you hurt.”

“I don’t want to be hurt either,” he protested. He was getting a little tired of being lectured, and a little angry, too. “He was going after Marc. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

That was enough to make Marinette give up, apparently. They stood there in silence for a minute or two as she thought.

“Do I need to give you a—“

“No!” he cut her off, backing away and waving his hands in panic. “No! No spandex, not from anyone. Thanks.” He shuddered. The last thing he needed was to be expected to run around the rooftops in some kind of dorky costume and throw pencils at people or something.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly. “But Nathaniel, please, be careful?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel is 100% cheating on his taxes, I guarantee it. Jerk.


	10. I'm not kitten around. Do you have to? Really?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel starts stepping up, as he ought.

“I’ll try,” Nathaniel said to Marinette as he opened the classroom door. “I promise.”

Marinette didn’t look like she really believed him, but that was fine. She didn’t really have to.

Nathaniel looked around the room. It was half-empty and the teacher wasn’t there. That was odd, given that class should have been going for a while already. Like so many other things that were odd, he chalked it up to magic. That seemed to be even more likely right now, given Papillon had just tried Akumatizing Marc.

Almost all the Akuma class was there, though he saw both Ivan and Kim were elsewhere. The most important thing, aside from Adrien and Max being around, was that Lila _wasn’t_. He still didn’t know what was up between her and Adrien, but he knew she made him uncomfortable and that was enough for Nathaniel to be a little careful.

Adrien was sitting with Nino at the desk at the front of the room. They had been heads-down, sharing a set of earbuds and talking about something on Nino’s phone.

“Adrien?” he called. He waved too, just to make sure he caught his attention.

“Nathaniel?” Adrien asked as he looked up. He pulled the earbud out, letting tinny beats float through the air around him. “Don’t you have Arts & Crafts now?”

“Called on account of butterflies,” Nathaniel said. “It’s fine.”

That was enough to have everyone in the room looking at him. Nathaniel really hated it when everyone was looking at him. Being the center of attention was about the last thing he ever wanted, and he’d done it on purpose. Raising kittens properly sometimes required sacrifices.

“Listen, about yesterday in the library,” he started, making sure he was loud enough that he could be heard through the whole room. “I was way out of line there and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you like tha It really wasn’t cool. Also I didn’t know if the thing with you and your, uh… personnel choices? In the future? Should be public and I shouldn’t have said anything without knowing.”

Adrien gave him a puzzled look as he thought about that.

“The, um… genders? Of the other people involved?” Nathaniel explained.

“Oh. You mean that they were guys?” Adrien asked.

Nathaniel nodded. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have outed you. That wasn’t cool.”

“Thanks? But it’s fine?” he said with a shrug. “I’m in fashion, nobody cares. I don’t really need an apology,” Adrien said. “You already—“

“Yeah, last night I ran into Chat and talked to him, since I kinda slagged on him a little too.” Nathaniel said, cutting off Adrien before he could try and minimize what had happened. That was a bad habit Nathaniel had noticed in future-Adrien, and since being back it was really clear that had its roots deep in Adrien’s past. It offended him on Adrien’s behalf, really. Who the hell had made his cinnamon roll think so little of himself?

“But I haven’t apologized to _you_. You may not need one but you deserve one, and that’s important. Public fuckups get public apologies and I fucked up publicly. So again, I was way out of line and I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Adrien clearly didn’t know what to do with this, and Nathaniel could see he was getting a little uncomfortable with everyone looking at him. Apparently this was one more thing to put on their ‘talk about in private’ list.

Raising kittens was harder than he thought it’d be. The weirdest part, as he glanced around, was that Chloe seemed to approve. He didn’t think she approved of _anything_ , honestly. Certainly not him.

“Also, can I get your Dad’s phone number?” Nathaniel asked, since Adrien was looking uncomfortable and changing the subject seemed in order.

A momentary look of relief flashed across Adrien’s face, though it was replaced by a barely-hidden sad one. “Father doesn’t answer his phone.,” he said. “Everything goes through Nathalie.”

Nathaniel sighed. ‘Everything’ clearly included Adrien, which was eight kinds of fucked up. That was _another_ thing for the list later. For now, Nathaniel could deal with the henchman. Woman. Hench-person. Whatever.

“Fine. Can I get her number?”

“I’ll text it to you,” Adrien said.

“Thanks, I… wait.” Nathaniel frowned as he pulled his still-locked phone out of his satchel.

“What?”

“I’ll be right back,” Nathaniel said as he turned to head up the stairs to where Max was sitting. He hadn’t even been pretending to not watch Nathaniel and Adrien talking, but that was fine.

“Can I talk with Markov for a minute?” he asked, waving his phone at Max.

Max’s school bag was sitting on the empty chair where Kim normally sat, the flap opened enough to let light in.

“Are you busy now, Markov?” Max asked the bag. Nathaniel heard Markov’s propeller whir to life and the little robot’s head soon popped out into the open.

“I am currently unoccupied,” Markov said. “Is there something that I can help you with?”

“Yeah, there is,” Nathaniel said as he walked over to the back corner of the classroom, Markov flying close behind. It didn’t give them much privacy, but at least it was a little harder for anyone else to overhear.

“So I need three favors,” Nathaniel started.

“I am sure I can help,” Markov piped up in his cheerful electronic voice.

“Great. First, I need you to get all the records you can for Adrien. Trusts, accounts, work records, tax records, property ownership, passport images, stuff like that. Anything you can find.”

“That is a significant violation of his privacy, Nathaniel,” Markov said. He sounded a little concerned.

“Hey, Adrien!” Nathaniel called out. “Can we look up your records and stuff? It’s kinda important.”

“Sure?” Adrien called back, clearly unsure but trusting. Nathaniel would’ve felt bad about taking advantage of his inherent good nature and need to please but this wasn’t the time. “If you need it?”

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said. “Good enough?” he asked Markov.

“I suspect he is unaware of the details you are asking after,” Markov said.

“We’re going to go over it together later. He just should have it before he goes and talks with is lawyer.”

“He has a lawyer?”

“Can you check that too? If he doesn’t then I need to find him one. Second favor. I need all the public info you can get for _Gabriel_. The fashion company. Tax records, property records, stuff like that.”

“Simple,” Markov said. “Public records are available online.”

“Also, any chance of _Gabriel’s_ internal business records?”

“I am not sure that is entirely legal,” Markov said. He sounded significantly less concerned about this than Nathaniel’s asking for Adrien’s records.

“Oh, probably not. Is that a problem?” Nathaniel asked cheerfully.

Markov took a moment to think.

“Inquiry. Is this in support of Adrien’s extracurricular activities?” he finally asked.

Nathaniel wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. “I… yes? To make sure he… gets paid right for his modeling?” He knew that was a lame excuse, but he hadn’t expected Markov to have any suspicions about Adrien.

“That was not the activity of which I was referring,” Markov corrected.

Nathaniel took a moment to think. Markov was normally almost rudely straightforward, and him being this circumspect was strange.

“Your facial recognition software is pretty good, isn’t it,” Nathaniel finally asked. He could be circumspect too, though he wasn’t that good at it.

“Yes,” Markov said. “As are my voice recognition systems.”

Nathaniel sighed and hoped that Markov didn’t get Akumatized again. He had a feeling that could be very bad.

“Then yeah, this is definitely in support of his extracurricular activities.”

“Thank you,” Markov said. “I can get those records for you. It may take some time to download and analyze them. I suspect their security measures may be non-trivial.”

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said. “Whenever you get them is fine.”

“Perhaps we can go over them together,” Markov offered.

“Sure? I don’t know too much about accounting.”

“It would be a chance for us to interact. You are Max’s friend and Max is my friend so we should interact more,” Markov said.

“Oh? Sure, that sounds nice,” Nathaniel said. The little robot wasn’t any more odd than the rest of the class, and he could apparently keep a secret.

“You said you had three favors to ask?”

“Oh, right,” Nathaniel said. “Can you reset the passcode on my phone? I forgot what it was.”

Markov took Nathaniel’s phone in his gripper claw. After a few seconds the screen flashed on and Markov handed it back.

“I have removed the passcode,” he said. “There is also now a local note in the notes application with the names and passwords for the accounts associated with this phone, and I have added a reminder for you to check with me in two days for progress on the research project.”

Nathaniel grinned a huge grin. “Thanks, Markov! Can you text me something so I have your number?”

“You wish to be able to get in contact with me via text?” Markov asked. He sounded as surprised as an AI floating robot could reasonably sound.

“Sure? We’re friends, right? We should have each other’s numbers for texting and stuff.”

Markov’s lights flashed in what Nathaniel could’ve sworn was a happy pattern, and the little LED face display showed a 😊, which he took as a good sign. His phone pinged with an incoming text from a new number, which he quickly put into his contacts.

“Thanks, Markov. I’ll keep in touch, promise.”

“I will also,” the little robot said as it flew back to Max.

Nathaniel flipped back to his texting app, wincing at all the unread texts that had accumulated in the weeks the phone had spent locked. He suspected he had some apologizing to do, but he could deal with that later.

He walked back down the stairs to the front of the room. Most everyone had gone back to what they were doing while he talked to Markov, but he saw Adrien still watching.

“You needed Markov to unlock your phone?” Adrien asked as Nathaniel got to his desk.

“Look, it’s been seven years, don’t give me a hard time,” Nathaniel said.

“After the apology for yesterday in the library? Don’t _read_ me wrong I would _ab_ solutely never do that,” Adrien deadpanned. “Times _lick_ this call for sympathy.” The callbacks to Nathaniel’s extended rant were clear and almost physically painful.

“Adrien, _no_ ,” Nathaniel protested. He hadn’t realized how nice it had been to not be bombarded with bad wordplay until the last few blissful pun-free weeks just ended.

“Adrien _oui!_ ,” Adrien retorted, giving Nino a wink and a bro-hug.

“Adrien you,” Nino said, shoving Adrien aside. “Leave me out of this.”

“But Nino! He almost had to re- _flash_ his phone! I don’t want to _couch_ this in delicate terms, it could have been a _sauce_ of trouble.”

“Argh, no, not the puns. Please,” Nathaniel begged, “not the puns.”

“Pfft. I’m a _fountain_ of good humor.”

“I forgot what a nightmare it was living with you,” Nathaniel complained. “Please don’t do the cat ones.”

“I think they’re _furry_ _punny_ ,” Marinette said in solidarity.

“See? _Purr_ -fectly acceptable,” Adrien said, almost preening. He had a very Chat Noir look on his face and Nathaniel could almost see the cat ears prick up on his head.

“Some day we will look back and talk about this conversation,” Nathaniel said to Marinette, “and I will laugh at you so, so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to have Adrien launch into a bunch of double entendres, but I need some practice and I’ll save those for a later chapter maybe. (Adrien is physically active, almost 15, and has been shut up with the internet for most of his life. You can tell me he’s an entirely innocent cinnamon roll and would never make dirty puns, but Chat’s bondage twink getup says you lie)
> 
> Also Ladybug absolutely finds Chat funny. She just can't admit it.


	11. Paris by moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easier to avoid your own problems if you work on other people's.

Nathaniel sat at the edge of the Arc de Triomphe, looking south west-ish down L’Avenue Kléber towards the Trocadero. It was after nine at night and the skies above Paris were cloudless, a few bright stars twinkling in the darkness above. The moon was at his back, lending an almost pearlescent glow to the buildings stretched out below.

It wasn’t the prettiest view of the city, but it was interesting, and different than what he’d get looking at the Louvre. Or any of the other streets, really, there were plenty to choose from.

This was one of those times he was glad he was too young to drive again. Paris’ street layout was… not as friendly to driving as other cities. You did have plenty of things to look at when you sat on top of important monuments, though. There was that.

Right now he was working on immortalizing the race that Alix and Kim had along the Pont des Artes that morning. There wasn’t that much ambient light on top of the Arc, so he was working on his tablet instead of a paper sketch pad. The screen cast a faint blue light, probably making him seem a little creepy if anyone was out there actually looking.

He had a collection of snapshots and short videos he’d taken with his phone during the race. Younger Him would’ve been horrified at the thought of using photo references — he could almost hear his father’s voice saying ‘Artists were about _art_ ’ in his head, and ‘working from photos was just fancy tracing’. Older Him knew that was a bunch of crap and he was perfectly happy to have four seconds of video capturing Alix face-planting into a bench because she’d tried to vault it and her skate wheel got caught in the gaps between the boards. There were some amazingly hilarious stills in that sequence and he was _definitely_ going to present her with some.

The only downside was that the references were on his phone, next to a few messages he’d gotten right after, which had ruined the rest of his day:

[DeadbeatMom]: gallery showing tonight, dear. Home late

[DeadbeatMom]: €40 on the counter

[DeadbeatDad]: we need toothpaste

[DeadbeatMom]: Change of plans. In Milan rest of week.

[DeadbeatMom]: Papa should cook

[DeadbeatDad]: also pasty brush.

[DeadbeatDad]: and string. Plus fire extinguisher.

The labels weren’t exactly fair — both his parents were there. Just… not present. At all. In the time he’d been back he’d seen his mother maybe half a dozen times. He’d seen his father more than that, but most of those encounters had been with a distracted, mumbling artist rummaging around looking for something to use to make the exact perfect line on whatever canvas he was immersed with.

He’d remembered liking that when he had actually been fourteen. It made him feel all grown up to be trusted to be able to do what he needed to. His parents were important! His mother ran one of Paris’ highest-end art galleries, and his father was a celebrated modern artist. It was amazing they treated him like an adult.

Now that he was fourteen again, and remembered how little time he’d really _had_ with them he felt differently. Every second they could’ve spent together poked at him, a thousand thousand tiny pinpricks of chances they lost and would never had again.

He honestly hadn’t realized how much he needed his parents until he’d lost them in the future. And he hadn’t realized how little of them he had in the past until he came back and they weren’t around.

The loneliness would’ve been crushing if he hadn’t been adept at ignoring the hell out of his own problems and leaving them for Future Him.

Not the best of plans, but so far it was working…ish. He’d figure out something healthier later, he was sure.

A blast of noise from his phone shook him out of his reverie. The still of Alix flailing her arms was replaced by the picture of Marc he had in his contacts. It had been a few days since the akuma attempt at school and their awkward not-breaking-up, and honestly Nathaniel welcomed the distraction no matter what Marc had to say.

He just hoped it was good. He could use some good right around then.

“Nathaniel? Can we talk?” Marc asked. Nathaniel winced at that, then let out a sigh. It was what he kind of deserved.

“Sure, Marc. I’m on the Arc de Triomphe. Why don’t you join me.”

“OK. I can be there in a few minutes.”

Marc disconnected without saying anything else.

Nathaniel put his phone down and went back to his drawing. At least Monday morning in class would be kind of funny. He was pretty sure he could get Markov to get one of the better pictures up on the classroom projector.

Nathaniel was halfway through rough colors on Alix’s epic faceplant when his phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“I’m here,” Marc said.

Nathaniel looked around. Between the moon and the lights from the city around him the top of the arch was surprisingly well lit, and as far as he could tell he was alone.

“You are? I don’t see you.”

“I’m right by the metro entrance,” Marc said.

“Oh! That’s why. I’m sitting on the the south side.”

“I didn’t know there were benches there,” Marc said. Nathaniel could hear Marc’s breathing get heavier as he walked while talking into his phone.

“There...” Nathaniel trailed off as he looked down. The ground was 50 meters away so things were a little small, but he still had an excellent view. “Doesn’t look like there are any,” he said.

“Where are you sitting? Not on the ground, that’s gross!”

“Yuck, no. Too many feet and american buskers. Hold on a second,” Nathaniel said, wedging his phone between his shoulder and his head. He grabbed his paper sketchpad and, in the light of his tablet screen drew a quick outline of the arch, with a stick figure of Marc at the base and a stick figure of him sitting on the edge of the arch, with _Look Up!_ scrawled along the side. Satisfied it had the essentials, he ripped out the page, wadded it into a tight ball, and dropped it off the edge.

He was fifty meters up, there was a mild breeze, and he hadn’t aimed. There was absolutely no way that could work, so he was 100% sure it would.

“There, it should—“ he started to say. He was cut off by a squawk from Marc.

“Something hit me in the head.”

“That would be it,” Nathaniel said.

Looking down he watched the tiny figure of Marc, red hoodie almost glowing in the lights around the base of the monument, as he unfolded the paper. Marc’s head shot up and Nathaniel waved at what he hoped was a now-enlightened Marc.

“You can’t be up there!” Marc said, slightly hysterical.

Nathaniel looked around to double-check, but he definitely was sitting on top of the Arc.

“Oh, I absolutely can,” he said. “Shouldn’t, maybe, but that’s something else entirely. Come on up, the view’s pretty spectacular.”

“What? How?”

“There’s an access door around the north side. It should be open. Just climb the stairs. I’ll get things set up.”

“Okay,” Marc said, sounding entirely unsure.

Nathaniel disconnected, then got up and looked around the roof. While the view at the edge was absolutely amazing he wasn’t sure that Marc would entirely appreciate the big drop just past it. He took a few steps back, opened up his messenger bag, and started pulling things out.

First was a small broom. While they were high enough up that pigeons generally left the place alone, it was still dirty enough that he wouldn’t want to put anything down on it. Sweeping the ground clean only took a few seconds.

Next was a small green blanket that he spread out, and along one side he put a half dozen candles in glass jars. He was just starting to light them when he heard the creak of the roof door and the scuff of feet.

“Nathaniel?”

“Over here,” he called, waving at the shadowy figure by the entrance. Colors washed into the silhouette as Marc got closer, almost like he was fading into reality.

“All this stuff, where did you…” Marc started to say, before stopping as he watched Nathaniel pull a little camp chair out of his bag. It wasn’t much of a chair, just a seat and back with a few bit of strapping holding it together, but it was enough to give a little support when you sat in it. “How did you fit that _in_ there?” he asked with awe in his voice.

It was a reasonable question, since the chair was bigger than Nathaniel’s bag.

“I have no idea,” Nathaniel said cheerfully. “I think that’s why it works.”

“But… you…” He shook his head, clearly deciding that some questions were best left unasked and this was probably several of them.

“Shoes over there,” Nathaniel said absently as he pulled a light duvet out of the bag. “Next to mine. The stairs were kind of dirty.”

“I— okay,” Marc said. He sat at the edge of the blanket and started untying his laces.

“There!” Nathaniel was finally done getting things set up. The camp chair was facing the Louvre since that was the best view. He’d put the cushion down in front of it, with his tablet and phone down to the right of the chair for easier access. The duvet was in a rough semi-circle around the chair, ready to be pulled up.

Nathaniel sat down in the chair and patted the cushion in front of him. “Sit,” he said. “It’s a nice night.”

Marc did, tentatively settling in. He wasn’t sure what was going on and was clearly nervous.

Nathaniel pulled the duvet up over his shoulders, then wrapped it and his arms around the two of them.

“Comfortable?” he asked. His head was to the left of Marc, lips near his ear.

“Yes?” Marc replied. The hesitance in his voice was clear.

“But a little weirded out,” Nathaniel said.

“I… we shouldn’t be up here? And you’ve been avoiding me for weeks and we sort of had a fight and there was the Akuma and I don’t know what’s going on?”

Nathaniel chuckled for a moment. “Sorry, I’ve been kind of messed up. Let me tell you a story about the future,” he said.

With that he started to talk. About the fights between Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Papillon. About the final battle, that destroyed parts of Paris and seemingly killed the heroes. About the aftermath and the fear it would all happen again. About their own breakup and how badly it had hurt. About his time with his relatives, and running away to university. About how he couldn’t handle that, and his time living on the streets. About how Adrien had found him and saved his life. About how they’d lived together and each found some amount of peace because of that. And finally about how they’d returned to Paris and everything had gone wrong enough that he’d been sent back in time.

Nathaniel kept everyone’s secrets but his own. Those he shared freely, and he talked for nearly an hour.

Marc hadn’t said a word while Nathaniel talked. He didn’t mind, Nathaniel wasn’t sure he could’ve finished if he’d had to stop at any point.

“So you’re really how old?” Marc finally asked.

Nathaniel took a minute to work that out. “I turned 22 last weekend. I think?”

“Huh,” Marc said. He didn’t say anything else for a few minutes, and they just sat together in a cozy silence.

“That’s hard to believe,” he finally said.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel said. “I lived through and I kind of don’t believe it.”

“That, um… what you talked about? Us doing in the future?”

“Which thing? The breaking up?”

“No, the before that thing.”

“You mean sex?” Nathaniel asked. He could feel Marc blushing at the mention of it.

“I’m… if you want, but, uh…” he stuttered to a stop.

“You’re not ready?” Nathaniel guessed.

The way he relaxed in Nathaniel’s arms made the answer clear.

“You’re kind of young for me right now anyway,” he joked. Truthfully he was relieved, but he remembered how nervous Marc had been, and how embarrassed he got even hinting at anything intimate. That had passed, finally, but not yet. “I can wait. I think we’re worth waiting.”

“You… you talk more now,” Marc said.

“Sometimes,” Nathaniel admitted. “When I’m angry, or when I’m safe. Adrien liked to talk. It helped.”

“Huh,” Marc said again.

Anything more he might have said was interrupted by Nathaniel’s phone ringing. It was lying next to his bag on the blanket, Markov’s picture flashing on the screen as it rang. Nathaniel was comfortable with Marc in his arms and tempted to let the call go to voicemail, but these days he trusted that serendipity would be at least interesting, if not helpful.

“Siri, answer that,” he called.

“Hello Nathaniel,” Markov said as soon as the call connected. “I am inquiring as to whether we can talk.”

“I think we already are,” Nathaniel replied. Marc laughed silently in his arms at this, and Nathaniel gave him a playful little squeeze.

“Yes. My wording was inexact. Can we have a face to face meeting?” While a machine, Markov still managed to sound a little annoyed at Nathaniel’s joking.

“Now?” Nathaniel asked.

“I suspect that would be best,” Markov said. “There may be some potential time-sensitive issues involved.”

“Do you mind?” he asked Marc.

“Who is it?” Marc asked.

“It’s Markov, he’s the AI in my class,” Nathaniel replied. “He was doing some research for me.”

“You… have an AI taking classes with you?”

“Auditing, mostly,” Nathaniel said. “I don’t think he’s taking them for credit.”

“That doesn’t make it any more sensible.”

“Eh,” Nathaniel shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“Fine,” Marc said. “If he wants.”

“Great! Hear that, Markov?”

“I can be there shortly. Where are you?”

“Let me share my location, that’s probably easiest,” Nathaniel said. He reluctantly took one arm from around Marc and pushed a couple of buttons on his texting app.

There was a moment of silence. “Do you need assistance?” Markov asked.

“I appreciate the thought, Markov, but we’re fine,” Nathaniel said. “The view’s excellent. Can you make it here on your own? There’s a stairway we can open up if you need it.”

“I should have no trouble,” Markov said. “It may take some time to get there, however.”

“There is nowhere I’d rather be tonight,” Nathaniel said, conveniently forgetting several different homework assignments. “Do you?” he asked Marc.

“Not right away?” Marc said.

“Marc’s good, so whenever you get here.”

“I will be there shortly,” Markov said, and then the call disconnected.

“That was a robot?” Marc asked. “He seemed so real.”

“AI,” Nathaniel corrected. “Max built him a while back, and he is real. Real enough to get akumatized, at least. You remember Robustus a while back?”

Marc thought for a moment. “The giant transforming mecha monster one?”

Nathaniel nodded. “That was Markov. That’s how you can tell he’s real.”

“Has _everyone_ in your class been akumatized?” Marc marveled.

“At least once, pretty much, yeah. A few of us have been several different akumas, but Papillon’s kind of unimaginative and repeats himself a bunch.”

“That’s horrifying,” Marc whispered.

“It’s…” Nathaniel stopped, because Marc was right. It _was_ horrifying. Not in the moment, when you were under Papillon’s power. Afterward, though, when you remembered what you did, remembered how that small, private part of you had been pulled out and put on display for everyone to see? That was even worse.

Still better than having a building dropped on you. He could attest to that, not that he was particularly happy to be able to make the comparison.

“He got you once,” Nathaniel said. “That was our first date. It was so romantic.” He gave Marc a half-joking kiss right at the base of his neck.

“Nathaniel!” Marc said. “That tickles!”

“Sorry,” Nathaniel lied. He gave it a softer, slower kiss instead. “Better?”

Marc just melted into his arms. “Better,” he sighed.

“I’m sorry for the mixed messages,” said Nathaniel. “It’s just… It’s nice to hold you, and we will have liked the kissing a lot and I still miss that even though it hasn’t happened yet. Tell me to stop if I go too far.”

“So you’re going to hold me and snuggle me and kiss me?”

“And hold your hand and tell you I love you and maybe fall asleep wrapped around you.”

“I, uh,” Marc started to say. Nathaniel could feel the heat radiating off his cheeks. “That’s fine?” His voice squeaked on that last word. “And, um…” he said, squirming a little. This time Nathaniel could tell it was discomfort rather than embarrassment,.

“And at some point we can talk about details and explore more, but later. When we’re both ready.”

Marc relaxed. “Okay,” he said. “Later. The rest sounds really—“

“Good evening, citizens! What are you doing here on this lovely evening?” A voice rang out from the darkness behind them, cutting off whatever Marc was going to say. It was good timing, honestly, Nathaniel was pretty sure they needed a change of subject right then.

“Hi, Chat,” Nathaniel said without turning around. “We were just kind of hanging out and talking some. Want to join us?”

“Us?” Chat asked.

Nathaniel leaned to the side a little, revealing Marc. “Yep, us. Oh, right, it’s late. Time for snacks,” he said. One arm escaped from under the duvet and started to rummage around in his messenger bag. He pulled out a white cardboard bakery box, a few plastic wine glasses, and a liter of Orangina.

“I have some Korvapuusti tonight. Want some, Chat?”

“Sure,” Chat said. “What are they?”

“They’re good,” Nathaniel answered. He opened the box, showing the little striped, delicious butterflies that lay inside. The smell of cinnamon and cardamom waft out from the still-warm pastries.

“Those are still warm,” Marc said. “We’ve been up here for a few hours. How are they warm?”

“Magic,” Nathaniel said with a grin. The answer was both terribly unhelpful and extremely accurate. “Can you pour the Orangina for us, Chat?”

The magic leather catboy obliged, opening the bottle and filling the glasses. “Why are you up here?” he asked as he did.

“I was here because it wasn’t home. Marc and I really needed to talk, so that’s why he’s here. I didn’t expect you to vault by, but I assume you saw us, so that’s why you’re here. Or it could be magic. That happens too.” Nathaniel shrugged from under the duvet.

“No, I meant why are you _on top of the Arc de Triomphe_.” Chat shot him a look. That was a fair question, since Nathaniel probably shouldn’t have been able to get on top of the Arc in the first place.

“Because the view’s pretty amazing,” Nathaniel answered, intentionally missing the point. “I mean, look at the angle on the Louvre. You can see the beauty of the city stretched out beneath you and it makes your problems seem so small for a little while.”

Chat just nodded in understanding, but Marc turned his head and gave him a worried look.

“Nath? Are you ok?”

“Me? I’m…” he trailed off, since anything he could say felt like a huge lie. Instead he just squeezed Marc tight, burying his face in his shoulder.

“Nathaniel, I have arrived,” Markov said, interrupting what was turning into a Moment. Nathaniel was glad, he wasn’t sure he could handle one of those right then. He took a deep breath and put on a happy face.

“Hi Markov. We’re having snacks. Want some?” Nathaniel said, waving at the box sitting on the blanket next to them.

“I am not capable of eating,” Markov remarked.

“I have a charger brick and a USB cable,” Nathaniel said.

“I would love a snack,” Markov said.

“Great!” Nathaniel pulled the electronics out, and after three tries finally got the cable plugged in.

As he handed it to the little flying robot he said “Hey, Markov. You remember that thing you did the time Adrien had that party? With his sound system? Do you think you could do that again?”

“It would be very simple, Nathaniel,” Markov said. “Anything on the mansion’s servers could be sent to the speaker system.”

“Could you do it from outside, though?”

“That would be…” Markov trailed off as he hovered silently for a few seconds. “While it could be done I would have to breach the mansion’s network security first. That may take some time.”

“Huh,” Nathaniel said.

“What are you planning?” Chat asked, sounding suspicious.

“Good question,” Nathaniel said, not actually answering anything.

“If there was local access that would make things significantly easier,” Markov observed.

“Nice! What kind of access? Would you need cables or something?” Nathaniel was admittedly a little fuzzy on anything computer-y.

A tiny USB dongle dropped out of Markov’s gripper-claw, one so small it would barely stick out of the port when it was plugged in.

“This would allow me access to control the audio equipment, if it were attached to a computer on the mansion’s network.”

“Awesome,” Nathaniel said, holding his hand out. Markov dropped the device into his palm. “Hey, Chat? Take this!”

He tossed the tiny bit of electronics towards Chat Noir, who snatched it out of the air almost without looking. “What should I be doing with this?” he asked, sounding somewhat wary.

“Give it to Adrien Agreste if you see him,” Nathaniel said. “Could be handy in case we need to prank Gabriel Agreste at some point. Adrien might be down for that.”

“Prank… Gabriel Agreste?”

“Yup,” Nathaniel said. “Imagine the _Danse Macbre_ going off at three in the morning during a thunderstorm.That’d be hilarious. Plus I think we blew out all the breakers in the mansion when we did it last time. That’d probably disable the security systems, which would be convenient if the mansion gets locked down at some point and we need to get Adrien out.”

“I think the mansion defenses fail closed,” Chat observed.

“Eh, probably, but we can just send you over to cataclysm the windows or something. Anyway, it’s an option.”

“Huh,” Chat said. He tucked the little dongle into a pocket, slowly savored his cinnamon pastry, and thought.

“I am still gathering the business data you asked for. I prioritized gathering the personal financial information you requested. I have that,” Markov said.

“Thanks! Did you get Adrien’s lawyer and accountant’s contact info too?” Nathaniel asked.

“Why are you looking into Adrien Agreste’s finances?” Marc asked, beating Chat to the question.

“Adrien’s my friend and he’s a sweetheart sunshine boy,” Nathaniel said. Next to him Chat’s ears pricked up and he preened just a little bit. “But his dad’s a world-class prick, and in the future I know he got screwed over by some of the games he played with Adrien’s finances.”

“There are a number of indications of irregularities,” Markov said. “I do not currently have enough information to say whether it rises to the level of illegality, however.”

“Eh, that’s for the professionals to figure out,” Nathaniel said. “Thanks. I assume he doesn’t have access yet, right? Too young? There should be 60 million euro, give or take, in his accounts.”

“The total value depends to some extent on market valuations, but that amount is approximately correct. As a minor his access to those funds is severely restricted. I believe, however, he may be able to make some use the properties in his name.”

“Those are still there? Good, that hasn’t happened yet.” Nathaniel relaxed. Of all the financial games Gabriel had played, all the money he’d funneled into the company or wasted on his supervillain evil lair bullshit, losing control of places Adrien had fond childhood memories of had been the worst.

“Properties?” Chat and Marc asked simultaneously.

“There is an apartment in Paris, a property outside Nice, a villa in Italy, and a flat in London. Additionally, his mother has not yet been legally declared deceased,” Markov said. Nathaniel winced as he felt Chat stiffen next to him. He really didn’t want to get into the subject of Adrien’s mother right then.

“Depending on the resolution of that issue there is approximately 130 million euro, and several more properties in the Graham de Vanily trusts. He also is holder of eleven percent of _Gabriel_ ’s stock, and half of Emile’s twenty percent share should descend to him on the official declaration of her death.”

Nathaniel slumped, relieved. “Excellent. We are going to have an interesting chat with his lawyer later. That should be fun.”

“Apartment in… Paris?” Chat said quietly.

“Yes,” Markov answered. “Previously owned by Emile Graham de Vanily Agreste, transferred to Adrien Agreste approximately ten years ago. I have the address if you wish it,” Markov said helpfully.

“It’s… I’d… No, that’s fine,” Chat said. “I think I have to go, though.”

“Bye Chat,” Nathaniel said. “If you do drop that USB thing off with Adrien can you let him know I’ll catch up with him on Monday and we’ll see about the lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Chat said, being uncharacteristically loose with his language. “I’ll tell him.” And with that Chat took a slow vault off the Arch and disappeared into the Parisian night.

“I should be returning to Max,” Markov said. The cable disconnected and fell to the ground. “Thank you for the snack, it was very nice.”

“Any time, Markov,” Nathaniel said. He watched as the little robot flew off, slowly shrinking to a speck then fading into the shadows.

Nathaniel finally noticed that Marc had gone extremely quiet.

“Marc? Babe? Are you OK?”

“He… Adrien is rich,” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” Nathaniel agreed. “Sort of? His mom is old money and his dad is running a good sized fashion empire. They have cash.”

“He seems so normal,” Marc said.

“He _is_ normal,” Nathaniel said. “Well, sort of? He wants to be normal. He’s a sweetheart. He’s not much different from anyone else in the class.”

“Nathaniel,” Marc said, with exaggerated calm, “your whole _class_ is weird.”

“No!” Nathaniel protested. “We’re all…” he stopped, thinking for a moment. Chloe was the mayor’s daughter, Marinette was heir to one of the undisputed best bakeries in a city known for pastry, Alix’s father ran the Louvre’s Egyptian collection, Alya’s mother was a three star Michelin chef, Rose was chummy with royalty, Lila’s mother was an ambassador, and Julika’s mom was an retired international superstar musician. His own parents were high up in Paris’ art scene. Adrien being rich was actually less standout than him being a supermodel.

“Fine,” he admitted. “We’re weird. Wait, is that why you didn’t blink about the time travel thing?”

“Nathaniel,” Marc said slowly, “if you told me half your class were superheroes I’d believe it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Adrien is personally and familially Rich, though both canon and and fanon maybe don’t have as good a grasp on this as they should. _Gabriel_ probably has annual revenues in the mid-single-digit billions of euros, mom is old money, and also he's an international supermodel. Dunno if Gabe himself comes from money, but even if not he's certainly got it now -- supervillain lairs do not come cheap.
> 
> And yes, Nathaniel is absolutely going to feed that boy every variant of cinnamon roll he can find, until Adrien notices the joke. Then he'll keep on doing it, since cinnamon rolls are awesome.


End file.
